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| Rev. Canon George Sinclair |
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(Podcast of CFRA broadcast on Sunday, August 25th , 2013)
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Broadcast Notes:
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(Abridged notes covering discussion on Luke 10: 25-42)
‘How to Pray’ (Part 1)
(Please click on the audio link: http://proxy.autopod.ca/podcasts/chum/6/15331/good_news_067_aug25.mp3 for far greater detail.)
This week, we look at the only place in the Gospels where
somebody asks Jesus to teach them to pray.
(Luke11: 1-4 )
Luke 11:1-4 [English Standard Version
Anglicised (ESVUK)]
The Lord's Prayer
11 Now Jesus[a] was praying in a certain place, and
when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as
John taught his disciples.” 2 And he said to them, “When you
pray, say:
“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread,[b]
4 and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread,[b]
4 and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”
Footnotes:
In prayer, can we address God by anything we want? What did
Jesus say when he was asked? Jesus said, “When you pray,
say ‘Father’.”
When talking of God abstractly, we speak of him in terms of
our father/parent (Greek: ‘pater’). But, when addressing God directly and
personally, the Greek word is “ab-ba” or “Father/Daddy”.
In adult terms, some may think it childish to say “Daddy”,
but we are after all, “children of God, by adoption and grace”. (Reference,
also: Romans8: 15-17.)
One way of treating the matter is to address God in public
prayer as “Father” (in the personal sense), and in private prayer, use, “Dad” to
intimately express recognition before God of one’s respectful/loving father-child
relationship, of one’s belonging in a familial sense of service, trust and
obedience.
Such intimacy in addressing God seems all the more proper in
light of the fact that Jesus is telling us in this scripture that we are God’s
children by adoption and grace. Jesus, on on his way to die on the Cross and to
rise again, Jesus is pointing to the fact that through his death on the cross,
and through his resurrection, God is providing the means through which I can
become, and you can become, God’s child by adoption and grace.
Here’s the final take-away: Jesus, on His way to the Cross
instructed us on how to pray, intimately to the living God, and to call Him “Father”…
as, “Dad”.
That’s spectacular!
Let’s Pray:
Father, we thank you
for Jesus. We thank you for His death upon the Cross and His mighty
resurrection. We thank you, Father, that by His death upon the Cross, on my
behalf and on each person’s behalf, He has provided the means by which you can
adopt us, by grace.
And so, Father, we ask
that you grow in us a humble trusting knowledge of the greatness of Jesus to be
the means by which we can become your child by adoption and grace, and that you
help us to turn to Him in faith.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Rev. Canon George Sinclair
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To listen to the above broadcast, click on the
following link:
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