The Way Of BlessingSample

The Lord’s Prayer

Our.
I come as a member of a new family, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation. I am not alone.

Father.
Archbishop Rowan Williams wrote, ‘this is not an academic word coolly spoken. It is the voice of a dependent child awakening from a terrifying nightmare’. It is a word of inclusion into a family, a warm domestic word not used of God until Jesus reframed the relationship. It is an invocation of His manifest presence in our daily realities.

In heaven.
The place of authority, and I can come boldly straight into the heart of it and stand in the most secret councils.

Hallowed be thy name.
Come and be God with all your attributes and character, fully manifest, in my life, family, community, college, workplace, et cetera, so that people are overwhelmed by your love, goodness, and mercy. Essentially we are crying out that God might break out as God so that the result is our neighbors hallowing His name, not as a duty but as an expression of awe, wonder, and love.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.
The heart of the outline: Invoking the coming in of the kingdom, the rule of God, plundering Satan, binding his works, and setting prisoners free. Heaven is coming to earth now.

Give us today our daily bread.
Jesus was not referring to anything other than dependency on God for the basic supply of bread. As with the Old Testament manna, bread was a basic necessity of life at the time.

And forgive us our trespasses.
Offensive to the religious across the millennia who would expect this heading to come well before physical supply of bread because bread isn’t spiritual in their view.

As we forgive those who trespass against us.
The reminder that the flow of forgiveness is linked to our forgiving of others, otherwise we are like the unjust steward who ended up in disgrace. This is an echo of the key biblical motif that we forgive because we are forgiven.

And lead us not into temptation.
The Holy Spirit took Jesus into the wilderness to be shaped through His testing by the evil one. I want to learn from His example and keep my ears open to the Lord. Don’t let me come to the point where the only way He can grab my attention is through the battles of temptation.

But deliver us from (the) evil (one).
We need to trust in His delivering power even while we put on our amount of protection.

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory.
He has the power to deliver the goods. He is faithful to His word and powerful to keep it. These subversive prayer words refute the claim to divinity of the Caesars in Rome. They are the words of the rebel Jesus, the true King, establishing a new kingdom.

How can we voice these words and not burst into worship? Worship and prayer will gladden the heart of God—but they will also shape us into carriers of blessing, bringing more than words.