The Lord's Prayer for Daily Life The Lord's Prayer for Daily Life was published in 2008 and is a modern meditation on the Lord's Prayer. In exploring the Lord's Prayer, the book takes you below the surface meaning of Jesus's words and his larger teachings to discover fresh interpretations of the metaphors and parables contained in the Gospels. The book's thought-provoking commentary is supported by...
The Lord's Prayer for Daily Life Henry David Thoreau, tucked away in his Walden cabin, famously said that most of us lead lives of quiet desperation. That was in 1845. Today, things are not so quiet in the United States. Anxiety and depression are regular rites of passage from which millions never graduate. Civility meanwhile has long been dropped from our national discourse. It's...
Our Father Who Art In Heaven | Meaning The Lord's Prayer begins with an idea that seems easy enough to understand. Jesus wants to establish God as our heavenly Father, and we as his children. What we often fail to notice though is what Jesus doesn't say. Yet what he leaves out is just as important. What Jesus doesn't say is that we should...
Hallowed Be Thy Name | Meaning Jesus establishes God as a heavenly father figure, but that's not enough for most of us. Without a name, he seems lost in abstraction. Try as we might, we simply can't bring him into view. There is only the vague presence of someone hovering around us—like the adult of a Charlie Brown Peanuts Special, always outside the frame,...
Thy Kingdom Come | Meaning With the second line of The Lord's Prayer, we arrive at the heart of the matter: God's kingdom. To understand how Jesus views his Father's kingdom, we first need to do something that will seem strange. We must take all discussion of "Heaven" off the table. There will be no talk about heaven with a capital "H," the place...
Thy Will Be Done | Meaning In the Book of Luke, there is a curious statement about God. Luke quotes the prophet Isaiah as saying that through Christ (the Lord) all mankind shall see the "salvation of God". ((Every chasm shall be filled, every mountain and hill shall be leveled; the winding ways shall be straightened; the rough roads made smooth, 6 And all...
Our Daily Bread | Meaning Knowing that we can claim ownership of our inheritance in the living hour is one thing. But what are we supposed to do with that knowledge? The childhood keys of wonderment and immediacy help unlock the door to the kingdom of heaven, but they don't have the power to usher us across the threshold. To cross into the kingdom...
And Forgive Us Our Trespasses | Meaning We've just described our journey toward a life in Christ as a rising. But the act of "rising" (such as rising above petty arguments and concerns) can sometimes get us into trouble. The reason is that when we rise toward our divinity, we often look down on others with a misguided sense of superiority. ((Speaking to people...
And Lead Us Not Into Temptation | Meaning Having led us through forgiveness, the Lord's Prayer turns to temptation. Jesus approaches the subject from a curious angle. He asks us to pray that the Father will not lead us into temptation. "This inevitably causes us to ask: Why would an all-good God lead us to the devil's doorstep? If we believe in the Lord,...
For Thine Is The Kingdom, Power & Glory | Meaning The Lord's Prayer began by grounding us in our relationship with the Father, and it ends now by solidifying our faith in that kinship. ((While the final line of the Lord's Prayer is not included in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of Luke's version, we have little doubt...
Our free online book The Lords Prayer for Daily Life was written in a way that we hope appeals to both teens and adults, each group of readers being able to take certain lessons from it, or simply food for further thought. But what about the child? The Lord's Prayer is the kind of prayer that children can learn at a young age, and...
On one of these days, when Jesus was teaching the people in the temple courts and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, joined by the councilors, confronted him, 2 And addressing him, said: "Tell us what authority you have to do these things. Who is it that has given you this authority?" 3 "I, too," said Jesus in...
The following is the Lord's Prayer from The King James Version (KJV) of the Holy Bible, the prayer which Jesus taught his disciples when they asked him how to pray, the prayer which is the Rosetta Stone for understanding the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The prayer appears twice in the KJV Holy Bible: in the Gospel of Matthew 6:9-13, and in the Gospel of...
John Wesley's sermon on the Lord's Prayer is certainly among the most well-known sermons on the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples. Wesley (1703-1791) was known as a strong opponent of the doctrines of Calvinism, and after engaging with the Moravians, he ultimately became recognized as a co-founder of the Methodist movement, as well as having an strong influence on Pentecostals. Wesley's sermon on...