This evening, Stephen spoke from Matthew 6:9-15. The Lord’s prayer is a template for us to follow in how to pray (communicating with God verbally and spiritually), but this also forms a pattern for living. It starts by setting the King in glory in our lives (‘our Father in heaven, hallowed by Your name’), for knowing the difference our heavenly Father makes and accepting the difference that this makes is crucial to our wellbeing.
Often, we have recited the Lord’s prayer collectively, but this prayer is important in answering key questions in life to do with our purpose and identity. As we pray ‘Your kingdom, Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven’, we come to understand that our purpose is to honour God and advance His kingdom through who we are and in everything that we do through our cooperation with God’s Spirit who is at work in each and every one of us. We grow to the point where what we want is aligned with what God wants so that we think, speak, act and relate to people in a Christ-like way. We are inwardly connected to Jesus (see John 15:1-8) and can then live our lives pursuing the interests of God’s kingdom.
Often, we want to know our specific, individual purpose with certainty, wanting to know our unique purpose in life . Sometimes, perhaps, our search for the specific is misguided and our need for certainty may reflect our addiction to control. God wants to teach us to trust Him, rather like when we learn to abseil and have to lean back and lean out and ultimately let go! Focussing on God will centre us squarely in God’s plan for our lives.
We also had two birthdays to celebrate:
