Jesus prayed

Prayer of Adoration

Let's pray

God of justice, peace and righteousness come into our

midst this morning

Breathe your breath,

your Spirit of truth,

your energy,

your enlivening,

your imagination on us.

Wake us up

Open our eyes

Unplug our ears

That we might hear

That we might see

That we might grieve

That we might dream

That we might follow the ways of your extraordinary

kingdom

Amen

Dad story

Photo of Dad

When I was young I just wanted to be around him.

Photo of me

I think you can see a certain similarity.

He was always pottering around in the garage.

When I was 10, he was made redundant, 1987 and all that. He ended up starting his own business, but he took a year and gave himself two projects: one was to write his engineering thesis, and for the other, he bought a rusty pile of bolts and parts from a bin at his friend’s motorcycle workshop, and rebuilt a 1967 Triumph Bonnevylle.

That meant more long evenings in the garage. Helping dad.

Sometimes showed me exactly what to do, more often it was just “hold this”, and I learned by osmosis.

I like to think of myself as being able to have a decent crack at most things, and a lot of that confidence and know-how I inherited a and developed from time in the garage with my dad.

Reading the Gospels, I get the feeling that Jesus’ relationship with his disciples was not too dissimilar from my relationship with my dad.

They were right there, a part of everything, joining in with great enthusiasm whenever they got the chance, but also not always entirely understanding what was happening

Context

72

Who is my neighbour?

Mary & Martha

Lord’s Prayer

Delivery from demons

Who is Jesus?

Disciples constantly trying to figure Jesus out

Jesus as Rabbi

Not putting him in a box, but definitely trying to get a handle on him. To understand him, and what he’s all about.

Jesus waits for them to catch up

JEsus just goes off by himself and prays.

Maybe there’s a lesson in there for us. We’re so quick to imagine that we’ve got JEsu figured out. Maybe he’s wating for us to catch up too.

Jesus just prayed

As their Rabbi, they ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, just like John taught his disciples

The thing is, Jesus has already been praying, all the time.

Didn’t give them a course on prayer - Jesus just prayed, waited for them to respond

In his own prayer life, and in the way that he teaches his disciples, Jesus is not interested in circumscribing his own status.

Not a rote prayer, but a model for praying

Shorter version than we’re used to.

Brief.

Abrupt.

“Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in.” - Luk 11:10 - The Message

Luke 11:10 The Message

10 “Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in.

Speaks to the heart

How shall we pray? == How can we know that our prayers will be answered?

Persistence

Expectation

the Goodness of God

Expectation is the meat in the sandwich

the gap between “Don’t expect anything” and “Name it & claim it”

Confusing for us

Where do we start?

How should we pray?

Not our prayers that are powerful, but God’s loving generosity to us in Jesus, through the Holy Spirit.

Jesus’ prayer

Almost unbelievably simple

Not about convincing God to do something, but about molding us in the image of Christ, as we connect with our Heavenly Father.

Prayers shape hearts, Hearts shape lives

Connect with our Father

Glorify God

Call for His Kingdom

Provide for us

Forgive us

help us find our way

How then should we pray?

our lives as members of our communities, and as members of the Body of Christ continue their orbit around the core principles of our faith.  Love the Lord your God with you heart, soul and mind.  Love your neighbour as yourself.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 

We can trace all of these here.

The extent to which we engage with these principles will have a radically more profound effect on our world and our lives than the identity of the latest person sitting in a global hot seat.

  When Jesus taught his disciples to pray he wasn't giving them the secret combination to access God's favour. Rather, he was giving us a compass to orient our lives.  Jesus shapes our prayers, our prayers shape our hearts and minds, and our hearts and minds join in God's work of reconciliation and salvation in our world.

Are we able to confess?

As I opened my own heart and mind to the prayer that Jesus prayed this week, I was struck by one verse in particular:

Luke 11:4 NIV

4 Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’ ”

Those two things: forgiving and acknowledging our own need for forgiveness are intrinsically linked

There was a time in the church, or at least we remember a time in the church, when as Christians, we seemed to wallow in our own sinfulness, and to point the finger of blame and shame at any less-than-perfect person that darkened our doors.

The more that we’re convinced of our own righteousness, the harder we find it to forgive other people.

You’d think it would be the other way around - the more that we have our own lives sorted out, the more that we can help others. But it’s not the case! Because none of us ever truly have our lives sorted out, but all too often we pretend to ourselves and to others that we do.

And, quite rightly, we want nothing to do with that.

So we shy away from the “S” word - “sin” like it’s a poisoned chalice. For fear of being judgmental, we judge ourselves innocent. I’m OK, you’re OK.

But it’s a strange thing. We avoid the symptom, but have we ever dealt with the heart of the problem? Is everything really OK? Are we OK?

Because it seems to me that a symptom of the human condition is to resist admitting fault. We can’t face the prospect of being wrong.

We see that in the world all around us, don’t we? And it only seems to have accelerated in these last years. We aim for universal acceptance, but we’re we’ve ended up is the most polarised and antagonistic environment that the world has seen in generations.

And all of it comes down to one simple fact: We cannot admit when we’re wrong. In fact, it’s even worse than that, we are so afraid of losing face, that we cannot even admit when we’ve been wrong in the past.

We point out each other’s nakedness while eulogising our own new clothes.

And no-one is prepared to back down.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking global conflicts, or family crisis.

What is true of Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, is also true of you and of me.

What the world needs now, more than anything else, is humility and contrition. What the world needs now, more than anything else, is forgiveness and grace.

And the paradoxical thing about admitting when we’re wrong is that it does not end in failure, but in freedom.

Confession is a release from the evil of guilt and shame.

As he teaches us to pray, Jesus teaches us humility and self-awareness. He teaches us confession, and offers us grace, even as he invites us into forgiveness and acceptance of those who are different from us.

The New International Version Chapter 11

Forgive us our sins,

for we also forgive everyone who sins against us

Dad Again

The Lord’s Prayer is not the be all and end all of our prayer lives. It’s a starting point. It’s an invitation. It’s the key that unlocks the door of our hearts to God’s world, and God’s will.

Our lives of prayer start out like my time in the garage with dad “Hold this. Go there.” But as we allow these words of prayer to mold and shape our lives, we find that we grow in our own faith and our own understanding, just as I grew from being my father’s gopher to becoming a capable handyman in my own right.