Thoughts on the Lord's Prayer

I think in free-churches there has been a movement away from reciting the Lord's Prayer in congregational worship. This has been going on now for many years. I understand why: we don't want to get caught in meaningless routine. But I also find it interesting to consider how often I have heard the forlorn cry "I'm struggling with prayer - I just don't know what to pray about!"

Granted that speaking to God should be more than just repeating the Lord's Prayer (Jesus couldn't have taken all night just to pray these sentences), it is yet Christ's direct response to the request for help in praying. This is the way we pray. These are the 'headings', the structure of prayer for Christians.

Perhaps we could say this: the Lord's prayer lists the titles of the chapters, and we write the book with our prayers.

If we memorise and repeat the chapter headings, then we always will know what we should pray.

a Kempis 14

Grant me, O Lord, to know what I ought to know, to love what I ought to love, to praise what delights Thee most, to value what is precious in Thy sight, to hate what is offensive to Thee.

Book 3, chapter 50.

a Kempis 13 (so it's always happend!)

O what do I inwardly suffer, whilst with my mind I am occupied with heavenly objects, lo, presently a crowd of carnal thoughts and temptations interrupt my prayer!...Cast forth Thy lightning and scatter them; send out Thine arrows, and let all the phantoms of the enemy be dispelled...
...pardon me also, and mercifully look upon me, as often as I wander from Thee in my prayer. For I must truly confess, that I am accustomed to be very distracted. For I am often not there where in body I am standing or sitting, but I am rather there where my thoughts have borne me.

Book 3, chapter 48. Emphasis guiltily mine.

Painful humility

In the church, this "non-strategic ministry of the mundane" means sometimes I must be interruptible for tasks not on my agenda. I need to be available to pray with troubled people whom I will not be able to cure and who have no ability to contribute to my success. Sometimes in meetings I need to remain silent even when I have a thought that might impress somebody. Sometimes I need not to seek out information, even when I could get it and it would make me feel part of the inner ring.

Sometimes, non-strategic ministry just involves following the rules everybody else follows. Muhammad ("I am the greatest") Ali once allegedly refused to fasten his seatbelt on an airplane. After repeated requests from the flight attendent to buckle up, he finally said, "Superman don't need no seat belt." To which she is said to have replied, "Superman don't need no airplane."

...For God's great, holy joke about the messiah complex is this: Every human being who has ever lived has suffered from it, except one. And he was the Messiah.

John Ortberg (Leadership email, 30/1/07)

A bit more irony

Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President:

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

...which is interesting when you consider he owned many slaves, and opposed abolition.

Painful irony

In a discussion with other pastor-types recently, the topic rolled around to the state of our souls. "I don't mean to whine," said one of us (who shall remain nameless, though I'm certain it wasn't I), "but I actually found it easier to pursue spiritual health when I was not in ministry." Almost everyone agreed: we felt hurried, overloaded, drained, and often taken for granted.

This wasn't the first conversation I'd heard along these lines. We often talk as if working at a church gets in the way of living the gracious, winsome life Jesus calls us to. After a while the question is bound to surface: What is happening when involvement in "ministry" seems to produce less spiritually vital people?

I had breakfast recently with a friend whose father has ministered in Christian circles for close to fifty years. His dad said to him recently, "Well, son, we'll have to get together soon, as soon as I can get my schedule under control." His son commented: "For all thirty-nine years of my life, my dad has talked about what we're going to do as soon as he gets his schedule under control. He actually seems to believe that someday his schedule will come under control. He refuses to talk about or even acknowledge the real reason why his schedule is out of control."

I remember a church-planting consultant who warned a group of us that we would need to pay the price if we wanted a successful church plant. We'd have to do whatever it took: let our marriages suffer, put our children on hold.

But it seemed to me then, and it does now, that this cannot be the way God intended ministry. If the purpose of ministry is to convince people to live the kind of life Jesus invites us to live, how can the church be built on people who give up living the kind of life Jesus invites us to live?

...If ministry is being done right, it will aid in having Christ formed in me. My involvement in ministry (using ministry in the narrow sense of service to the body of Christ) needs to be seen in light of an overall way of life designed to help me become transformed. If it is not doing this, something, somewhere, has gone wrong.

John Ortberg, Leadership email 23/1/07

a Kempis 12

Never study for the purpose of appearing learned; but strive to mortify your evil passions, which will be a greater benefit to you than knowledge of many abstruse matters .

Book 3 Chapter 43

Pastoral t-shirt 6

This is in memory of a small friend called Harold who, when very small, had a joke which he tried repeatedly. He would place the fist of one hand (representing the cheese) on the palm of the other and then ask his victim "Smell my cheese?" - and then biff them up the conk when they did.
For all those horrid questions we would rather avoid, but are backed against the wall - Harold, thanks for this t-shirt.