Seeking God, Seeking Kingdom, Seeking Life

Luke 11:1-13

Focal Luke 11:2-4

 2-4 So he said, “When you pray, say,

Father,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.”  (The Message accessed at www.biblegateway.com)

Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer is shorter, direct and to the point.  The disciples asked Jesus how to prayer and this was how he responded.  Sometimes it is hard to know how to pray, what to say.  Sometimes we get caught up wanting to use the right words, have the right posture, be in the right place.  We make it much more complicated than it should ever be.  I like the way the message portrays the prayer.  Sometimes, when I pray, I use the Lord's Prayer to structure my own prayer, expanding each element.  It is interesting that in none of the synoptics does the Lord's Prayer include petitions for other people.  It gives me pause to wonder, it gives me something else to consider.  I personally add those prayers of petition into my prayers.  

Jesus goes on to use an example of a persistent person who gets what he is asking for through persistence.  He says Ask and it shall be given, Seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you.  We seek God's Kingdom.  I have to quote Dallas Willard again today.  Dallas states that we should seek God's kingdom in every face to face encounter we have.  To do so transforms us, our relationships, and others.  

We ask for our "daily bread", that which we need.  Notice the model prayer is asking for what we need to sustain our life, not what we desire or want.  

Finally we ask to be forgiven, forgiving and in right relationship with God through the resistance to temptations to be outside of right relationship with God.  

Can you start out your day with this prayer?  Can this prayer become your life mantra?  Can this prayer become more than something we recite on Sunday morning.  Can this prayer become embodied within each of us and within our community of faith.  Knock on the door of God's heart and the doors the the Kingdom will swing wide open and you will enter in!  Thanks be to God.