Thursday, September 14, 2006

Why we need the Lord's prayer

Found this interesting thought on the Lord's prayer by Lorraine Kisly. She thinks, (and I am inclined to agree) that the we need the Lords Prayer in Church because it a prayer that turns the "prayer of our daily lives" on its head;

According to her our 'life' prayer goes some what like this:
Master of Earth
Exalt my name over all others.
Give me a kingdom where my will is never thwarted.
Let me take whatever I wish, and grant me vengeance over all who oppose me.
Let me satisfy my every desire,
And give me power to crush anyone who stands in my way...

It's kind of scary, because in spite of all the Holy Spirit's work in me, I still find myself wanting my own way, wanting to be first in everything.

The prayer of Jesus then maybe is more than our daily bread but out daily confession, and inoculation against our 'natural' tendencies..

3 comments:

Jono2005 said...

Reading some books on prayer at the mo, and one of the commentries said something along the lines of; Jesus came to take the 'I' out of a lot of our prayers and turn them into 'our'.

I sort of see that as the good of everyone rather than the good of me.

It also pointed out that he starts in the first line of the Lord's prayer by saying "Our Father", again very inclusive, which I quite like and reminds me to think bigger than myself! :)

Mich said...

Well said, thanks for dropping by

Andii said...

I found it really helpful to see that 'reverse paraphrase'. I blogged it . It was interesting to me to see the phrase 'life prayer'. In the book 'Praying the Pattern' which is practical exploration about making the Lord's prayer more fully a part of life, there is a section on praying the prayer with our life(style), might be interesting to you.