Lent and putting the Lord's Prayer into practice

Our Father, who art in heaven,

Hallowed be your name.

                                                                 Reverence

 

Your Kingdom come,

your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

                                                                 Obedience

 

Give us this day

our daily bread

                                                                 Trust

 

Forgive us our tresspasses

As we forgive those who tresspass against us

                                                                 Reconciliation

 

Lead us not into temptation

But deliver us from evil

                                                                 Resistance

 

For yours is the Kingdom,

the power and the glory, forever

                                                                 Doxology

For several years now, from birthday to birthday, I take a passage of the Bible and try to find ways to weave it into the way I live throughout the coming year. I try to live with, and live, the text. This isn't done in a pretentious or self-help way I hope; but as a form of prayer rooted in Scripture text, and within which to practice a life of deliberate response to the grace and mercy of God.

This year I want to try to live the Lord's Prayer. I don't want to "practice praying" by praying more. I want to align my life with what I pray when I pray the Lord's Prayer. So I've tried to distil each petition into what I think is its core value, or principle of action. The terms used are convictions intended to guide attitude and action rather than sounding like the non-disruptive aspirations of the vaguely pious. Values, practised as virtues, shape character.

So what demonstrable difference would it make to pray the Lord's Prayer by practising it?

What would happen if I let this brief and condensed text shape daily practice and everyday action?

Would the Lord's Prayer said each day, - morning, noon and night, - so remind me daily of the values of Jesus, that slowly, incrementally but definitely, life would be shaped to text, and heart shaped to practice?

What these values are, how they are to be lived, the existing attitudes they call in question, the life habits they must convert, the new life they make possible, the relationships they change - it is all an experiment in prayer, not as praying but as living what is prayed. To pray without ceasing may only be possible if understood as the orientation and daily re-orientation of the whole life towards God

by reverence for the holy,

     by obedient practices,

          by daily trust,

               by intentional reconciliation,

                    by resistance to evil,

                         and all this framed by doxology.

Comments

[Margaret]

Brilliant and thought provoking as always and yet so simplistic in some ways - I want to align my life with what I pray when I pray the Lord's Prayer - and so hard to do sometimes.

[Simon Jones]

I was asked last Sunday why we didn't use the Lord's Prayer in our worship, by which the asker meant, say it every week in church. I didn't have an answer because I sensed she was suggesting that the mere repetition of the words had value - something I instinctivly recoil against.

Your really helpful post has made me rethink that. You have captured the essence of the prayer as a template for our relationship with God and life of disicpleship, makiing the use of it in our worship potentially profoundly significant.

Thanks you.

[Jim Gordon]

Thanks Margaret. Hard to do is what's often true of things most worth doing. But we try - and God is good, thank goodness, and God!

Simon - good to hear from you again and hope life is good and getting gooder! I'm slowly growing a series of sermons on the Lord's Prayer, letting them grow out of observations, experiences, challenges and reminders that come from praying this prayer three times daily to remind me of the values that should be shaping my world-view, relationships and spirituality. I think the values and virtues that emerge from the theology of the Lord's Prayer would make our living revolutionary and radical in the best counter-cultural way. Anyway.....as my mother used to say when she wasn't sure of an outcome, "We'll see".

[Tony Maude]

"I can imagine no greater spiritual practice for people seeking the kingdom of God than to pray [the Lord's Prayer] - not as some sort of magical incantation, not as a mindless mantra, but as a way of dislodging our attention and affecton from distractions, and refocussing them on what matters most."
Brian D. McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus (2nd ed. 2006), p. 217

Like Simon, I have resisted using the Lord's Prayer in worship every week, even though at least one elderly member of our congregation here asks for it to be so used. My reason has been a fear of this prayer being a mindless mantra rather than an expression of a real desire to see God's kingdom come, to enter it and allow it to reshape us and refocus our lives. Perhaps, for some, constant repetition reduces Christ's words to meaningless mumbling, but I now worry that my fears have robbed people of the opportunity to allow these words of prayer to reshape them and thir lives.

[Julie]

I too have resisted using the Lord's Prayer in services (even though use liturgy and written prayer) for the same reasons as Simon. When I first arrived at my curch I did one service on the prayer to try and see whether people acually understood what they were praying and it was was clear they didn't - it was just a mantra. I have since done a whole series on it to try and open up its meaning so tha when it is prayer in community or privately it can become powerfull wayto help us re-orientate our lives into God' purposes in worship and obedience