Remember Pastor Ron's exhortation Sunday:
"Spend some time memorizing, reciting, and meditating on the Lord's Prayer everyday... Use it as the tool that Jesus intended it to be to assist us in proper self management and embracing the presence of the Father."
Here is an excerpt from an excellent book originally published under the title "I Want to Be a Christian" now titled and available as "Growing in Christ" by J.I Packer.
Three venerable formulae, as we are seeing, together add up to Christianity: the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer, summarizing respectively the Christian way of believing, behaving, and communing with God. The Lord’s Prayer in particular is a marvel of compression, and full of meaning. It is a compendium of the gospel (Tertullian), a body of divinity (Thomas Watson), a rule of purpose as well as of petition, and thus a key to the whole business of living. What it means to be a Christian is nowhere clearer than here. Like other Reformation catechisms, the Anglican Prayer Book Catechism centers on the three summaries. On the Lord’s Prayer it says:
Question: What desirest thou of God in this prayer?
Answer: I desire my Lord God our heavenly Father, who is the giver of all goodness, to send his grace unto me, and to all people, that we may worship him, serve him, and obey him, as we ought to do. And I pray unto God, that he will send us all things that be needful both for our souls and bodies; and that he will be merciful unto us, and forgive us our sins; and that it will please him to save and defend us in all dangers ghostly (i.e., spiritual) and bodily; and that he will keep us from all sin and wickedness, and from our ghostly enemy, and from everlasting death. And this I trust he will do of his mercy and goodness, through our Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore I say, Amen. So be it.
What these words give us a glimpse of, the following studies will try to spell out.
"Spend some time memorizing, reciting, and meditating on the Lord's Prayer everyday... Use it as the tool that Jesus intended it to be to assist us in proper self management and embracing the presence of the Father."
Here is an excerpt from an excellent book originally published under the title "I Want to Be a Christian" now titled and available as "Growing in Christ" by J.I Packer.
Three venerable formulae, as we are seeing, together add up to Christianity: the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer, summarizing respectively the Christian way of believing, behaving, and communing with God. The Lord’s Prayer in particular is a marvel of compression, and full of meaning. It is a compendium of the gospel (Tertullian), a body of divinity (Thomas Watson), a rule of purpose as well as of petition, and thus a key to the whole business of living. What it means to be a Christian is nowhere clearer than here. Like other Reformation catechisms, the Anglican Prayer Book Catechism centers on the three summaries. On the Lord’s Prayer it says:
Question: What desirest thou of God in this prayer?
Answer: I desire my Lord God our heavenly Father, who is the giver of all goodness, to send his grace unto me, and to all people, that we may worship him, serve him, and obey him, as we ought to do. And I pray unto God, that he will send us all things that be needful both for our souls and bodies; and that he will be merciful unto us, and forgive us our sins; and that it will please him to save and defend us in all dangers ghostly (i.e., spiritual) and bodily; and that he will keep us from all sin and wickedness, and from our ghostly enemy, and from everlasting death. And this I trust he will do of his mercy and goodness, through our Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore I say, Amen. So be it.
What these words give us a glimpse of, the following studies will try to spell out.
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