Our Father who art in heaven.

The prayer we know as the Lord’s prayer is used on many occasions, it is often rushed through as if it works by magic. I think that the task of the praying christian is to break up the prayer and to personalise each of the phrases.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. verse (click on verse for Bible passage) Jesus was teaching the people who accepted that he was from God the basics of being a Christian. The core of this teaching is just this that God’s will is done on earth, God has a will in every area of our lives and we will only know it if we acknowledge our need of him. verse There is a great contrast between us and God; we are poor and he is rich, we are ordinary and he is extraordinary, we are created and he is the creator. His will is rich, extraordinary and creative; our task is to believe this and pray it into being. The verse before the Lord’s prayer is this “your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:8 ESV) When we pray we keep it simple, “Your will be done in my life”, “may I live according to Your will”, “may Your will be done for those I love”.

If everyone we know is praying like this, the world will be a better place. It is so simple. The rich, extraordinary, creative will of God being done in our generation.

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What would Jesus do?

The Jesus we find in the Bible, called on people to remember that God was real, dependable and that His reign was near. A handful accepted this message and he called them his disciples and took them away taught them the basics of the life of faith. For those who were willing to acknowledge their need of God Jesus informed them that they were blessed and that the Kingdom of God was theirs! Today some people are so used to hearing these words that they are insensible to the depth of their meaning. Others have never heard these words and are lost without vision or hope in the midst of this world of worries.

While Jesus was teaching his followers about being Christians, he taught them to pray and among the words were “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. Jesus declared a vision of God’s reign on earth and encouraged the disciples to live their lives towards that end. I reckon that the reason this has not happened yet is because not enough people believed in the simplicity of the message. The purpose of this blog is to explore just how simple it is possible to be and to seek this Kingdom and the life that God wants lived and to encourage myself to go their.

Just think of that God’s will being done on earth: that is the will of God being done here on earth. That is surely a great thought but we need to make it practical for it to make any sense. First we need to make the prayer, then we need to wait until we receive the answer. My testimony is that I have been thinking these thoughts and praying this prayer for about 2 months now, I have been wondering the best way to write this down so perhaps I can move on to consider other parts of the christian life. Tonight I came to this conclusion, this looks right, this must be God’s will for today.

It is quite simple, remember that you need God and that He has a will, then pray it, wait and do it.

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