Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.

The concept of God as Father once seemed ludicrous. If God was up there he certainly could not also be my father down here. God is remarkably patient as a Father. When I finally embraced him, with little decorum he ran to me when I wandered home as the prodigal younger son. He gently rebuked me when I was the unloving elder son. I joyfully embrace his Fatherhood because as a father I need him to model to me how to love my kids.

“Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.

Most of us have little problem with God as Savior but God as a real Lord tends to be problematic. No one has a problem with a Sovereign that is merely a figurehead like say Queen Elizabeth. The Father though unlike the Queen of England desires and has the authority to be involved in every aspect of his subjects lives. God as a King offends our modern & post-modern pride. Where there are kings there are servants. None of us likes the idea of servitude. Oscar Wilde lived his life as a atheist in his attempt to flee God and be his own lord. This though is the great allusion of our world. Wilde in De Profundis summarizes well the human condition. “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” All humans either knowingly or unknowningly are as Wilde said “other people.” All of us already follow either a life given over to God or one given over to sin. Even our sin is not truly our own, it is at best someone else’s remixed.

We agree with Lucifer via the pen of John Milton: “It is better to reign in hell than be a servant in heaven.” We create artificial “heavens” which are nothing more than well manicured mirages of hell because God is not really in them. God does not desire such horror for us or his creation for he does not desire to leave us to our own poorly constructed mirages. God the Father is only found in his kingdom yet he invites us to come in to it. As his kingdom comes on Earth as it is in Heaven, God is offering a chance for people to enter his kingdom as servants. We can either seek to be rulers in our little kingdoms where we are nothing more than slaves or we can seek to serve in his kingdom where we are declared to be sons and daughters.

Give us this day our daily bread,

Jesus switches from God’s intangible kingdom to food the most tangible of human needs. Some have said this includes anything we desire, want, or need. Jesus though declares to his listeners after the prayer to focus only on their basic needs. He strips from us a justification to pray after treasures instead he urges us to build only for his Kingdom. In this life we are not be anxious about the needs of life for that is how those outside the Kingdom think. Without food every human on the planet will die. It is the primary irreducible need common to all humanity. When Jesus tells us to pray for our daily bread, he’s given us a spiritual guide to the temporal. It is not just to strive for simplicity in our prayers but to pray for the essentials of what we really need. How many people in our culture pray for cars, homes, and things that eventually end up in the trash or destroyed by time? How many prayers to God were sincerely uttered for the iPhone or a new car? Here God gives us a chance to be on absolutely equal footing with all humanity. It is meant to humble us.

and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Jesus turns things on us here. Everything already said find its application in the hardest place for us mere mortals. Forgiveness. In the prayer so far we who would become children of God find our deepest of needs from God tied to our fellow human. A group of religious men one day asked Jesus what was the greatest expression of their faith. Jesus answered that first it was to love God with all of our being. The second greatest was tied to this and was in fact similar to the first. It was to love others as we love ourselves. We are told in Scripture “to owe no one anything but to love one another”. The Christian faith is a faith of love for God is love. Jesus tells us we must forgive those that have wronged us and we are to love them. This is the greatest act in which humanity can emulate God. All the vile statements, untruths, and things that were meant to wound us, the things whispered behind our backs that are meant to define us through unrighteous judgments, the words spoken unlovingly to us, and all the human evil that characterizes living in a fallen world is to be forgiven. This is what God has done for us. This part of the prayer is my great struggle. I struggle to forgive those that do evil. Yet I know that if I dare to continually come before God asking him to actively forgive my debts then I must have already actively forgiven those who have sinned against me. Jesus declares that the two are so linked that we can not separate them without risking loosing both. This is the gospel and it is the part I don’t like because it demands that I forgive when all I want is retribution.

There is a story of a Corrie Ten Boom whose family was imprisoned for hiding Jews from the Nazis. Her family was arrested and while in Ravensbruck Concentration camp both her father and her sister die. Long after her liberation she spoke of how her family sacrificed much in the name of God and she hoped for healing to come from such great evil. She believed that this could only be done by practicing divine forgiveness. After one such talk a old Ravensbruck guard surprised her as he stood before and asked her for forgiveness for his sins against her and her family. This man that had contributed to her father and sisters death asked her for forgiveness. Her body was repulsed by the idea yet this is how she responded. “”I forgive you brother! With all my heart!” She forgave because she knew she had been forgiven. She possessed the heart of Jesus. The last words of Jesus on behalf of those who killed him were “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” If we really want to be like Jesus then we must forgive.

And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.

The prayer begins with a concept of a holy God and his kingdom. It ends with a petition to deliver us from the human condition. It begins with lofty language of a universal fatherhood and ends with the universal despair that can only be overcome by God’s leading. I struggle with this too because I want to be my own deliverer. I want the glory for overcoming my sin but the reality is only God can deliver us from evil. The children of Israel use to sing “My Deliver is coming, my Deliver is coming back.”

The offer of Jesus on the day when he offered the model prayer was for all those who were far off to come to God and be delivered through him. He was God’s Deliverer. This prayer has parts that I struggle with but I trust that my Deliver can sustain me through as my Father’s Kingdom comes even in my own life and struggles and eventually will once and for all end evil in this world. When the Kingdom fully comes evil will be judged by the only Righteous Judge. This is the gospel and it is the story that I struggle with and love.

This kind of trust in and knowledge of God’s grace makes a person joyful, confident, and happy with regard to God and all creatures.

This is what the Holy Spirit does by faith. Through faith, a person will do good to everyone without coercion, willingly and happily; he will serve everyone, suffer everything for the love and praise of God, who has shown him such grace. It is as impossible to separate works from faith as burning and shining from fire.

Therefore be on guard against your own false ideas and against the chatterers who think they are clever enough to make judgements about faith and good works but who are in reality the biggest fools.

Ask God to work faith in you; otherwise you will remain eternally without faith, no matter what you try to do or fabricate.” – Martin Luther, Preface to Romans.

My spiritual journey with God can best be described as wrestling. I am by nature a skeptic. It is hard for me to believe in a invisible being called God that is a Sovereign Lord. That belief goes against my nature and my culture. The virtue of our society is that we are our own lords and anything goes as long as its “consensual” and “no body gets hurt”. Sovereignty implies submission and the idea of submission goes against my very nature. I love music and it has been a great influence on my spiritual journey particularly in my late teens and early 20s. I really fell in love with the raw honesty of Jennifer Knapp’s music at a time I nearly walked away from the Church. She spoke in her music about struggles with a sovereign God. I’ve struggled too.

She is a incredible talent that has passionately spoken about her struggles with faith. Her music has spoken to me for years. It likely will for years to come. I was surprised in how Jennifer Knapp has responded to her coming out the closet. Some within the Church do not know what to do with her. Especially when you read the lyrics of her music before her hiatus. To these Christians she sounds like “one of us” i.e. conservative Christians but her actions is like “one of them” i.e. non-Christian. Homosexuality is often seen as one of the worse if not the worst of sins in the Church and there are few within conservative Christianity that believe the two can co-exist within the same person. What got to me is her lack of struggle.

Here are her words from Christianity Today.

But if you remove the social problem that homosexuality brings to the church—and the debate as to whether or not it should be called a “struggle,” because there are proponents on both sides—you remove the notion that I am living my life with a great deal of joy. It never occurred to me that I was in something that should be labeled as a “struggle.”

Where I and Jennifer part ways is on the idea of struggle.

Here is my confession. I am continually coming out of the closet of being a heterosexual sinner. I have struggled with God and my sexual desires from my earliest of memories throughout my 20s. Jennifer’s response does not bother me in the least in that she admits to homosexual desires. The difference is that she isn’t seeing it as a struggle. We differ greatly in how we have responded in coming out of our different respective closets. She says she isn’t struggling. Her lack of struggle bothers me.

God in the Old Testament proved himself to people in struggle. They proved that they were following him by their struggles. God showed himself to Jacob by struggling with Jacob. Jacob’s entire life was one of struggle. He knew God was real because he struggled with God. In the New Testament we see believers who struggled with their former homosexual praxis. The Scriptures teach that the lives of the saints of God are to be examples for how we struggle with God. I can not find one saint of God who did not struggle and for a majority of believers their internal struggle in both testaments where struggles with sexuality. It is a safe bet that we are going to and should struggle with God in our sexuality.

In my next post I’m going to talk about struggling with sex, the purpose of sex, and what God has to say to sinners like Jennifer Knapp and sinners like me about sex.

Thanks for leaving comments at http://willadair.com

Lent is based off of a period of 40 days ranging from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Anyone with a decent ability to read a calendar will notice 44 days. Many but not all observants of Lent abstain their sacrifices on each of the four Sundays that fall between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. These four Sundays are seen as mini-Easters. Whatever was being sacrificed can be enjoyed again on these days for the glory of God because Christ has risen.

The obvious question is why did the Early Church practice this? Why didn’t they just start Lent on a Sunday and do 40 straight days from whatever that day was till Easter day? There are several reasons.

First, the Early Christians took Sunday very seriously. Jesus is believed to have been raised from the dead on a Sunday (John 20:1). The Early Church worshiped on Sundays together (Acts 20:7, 1 Cor. 16:2). Sunday was a special day because of Christ resurrection.

Second, historically and traditionally speaking Sunday for the majority of Christians is suppose to be a day of rest and for them to celebrate the joy found in the resurrection of Christ. Sunday isn’t suppose to be about suffering and toil. That is the rest of the week. Sunday is suppose to be about joy and redemption. It is for most Christians the Christian version of Sabbath.

Third, each Sunday in Lent is seen as mini-episode or previews of the joy of Easter Sunday. Easter Sunday is not just the celebration of Jesus rising from the dead. It is a celebration of Jesus ultimate victory over sin and the end of sacrifice. Many of us sacrifice stuff, relationships, and other things to follow Christ. For many in the history of the Church to be a Christian means to be willing to sacrifice your life for your profession of faith. Easter prefigures the ending of sacrifice and the beginning of joy. One day for the people of God there will be no more sacrifice ever, only joy.

So how does this apply practically to adherents practicing Lent in century 21? When we give up for a week at a time be it some staple of life or a frequently used luxury then it produces at least two things. First it links us with a small taste of what Jesus went through. It also links us with those who have suffered much for their faith. We begin to realize how much we often focus on selfish things especially ourselves. It makes us hopefully realize that we often are seeking to find our joy in objects or ourselves and not in God or with our fellow Christian and fellow man. When we realize that we often focus on the wrong thing for the wrong reason then we are open to the Spirit’s correction. Lent is about Christ victory over sin and death but it is also very much about the Holy Spirit moving us towards repentance.

The single most important reason for each mini-Easter Sunday is that like Easter it is a way for us to experience a day that affirms Jesus ministry, death, and specifically in his resurrection the beginning of our redemption. This is the ultimate joy of the Christian. Easter proves that the gospel is a true message for all of us. Our temporary sacrifices may appear great in the moment but there is greater joy available in the midst of sacrifice if we persevere and look for the joy that is found in Christ resurrection.

Pick a reason.

Wars.

Stupidity.

Fate.

Nearly dying once.

Yet here comes 30.

CS Lewis lived this quote out. What will we sacrifice?

Bobby Capps (@bobbycapps on twitter) a friend of mine gave me the wise words that my ministry is not mine. I knew that but I still need to hear it because honestly I didn’t really believe it. I gave lip service to that for three years. I didn’t really believe it in how I thought. In large part it was about me. It isn’t ever suppose to be about me. That is how we should view our ministry. It is not mine. That is how we should think of our ministry. Tell yourself that when you plan. Tell yourself that when you dream. Tell yourself that when you fail. Tell yourself that when you succeed. Paul once said “I am crucified with Christ. It is not i who lives but Christ in me.”

There is an I in Christ but it isn’t referring to you or me. That I is part of the Great I AM. That I is God himself. There simply is not room for anyone else. God gets the glory for himself. If you want the spotlight go into show business, politics, or something else but get out of ministry. Take Paul’s words and put the flesh on them. Incarnate those into your ministry. That is what i am learning to do. It is not easy. That is what i must do. Think of yourself in the lowercase. Learn to walk humbly before your God. Let him be one the one that gets all the fame.

Think not overly on your success but be ready to admit your failure. Success can easily breed a arrogant prideful attitude. Failure can breed humility because it humbles you. To be sure over emphasis can occur but if we are wise it would be prudent to chalk up more to failure more than to success. Let God alone be your source of pride. Let Jesus magnified be your barometer of success. John Calvin summing up his ministry said the following.

I have had many infirmities, which you have been obliged to bear with, and what is more, all I have done is worthless. The ungodly will seize on that, but I repeat that all that I have done has been worthless and that I am a miserable creature. But certainly I may say this: that I have meant for the best, that my vices have always displeased me, and that the root of the fear of the Lord has always been in my heart. You may say “he meant well” and I pray that my evil may be forgiven and that if there was anything good you may confirm yourselves by it and have it as an example. (In Calvin a Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, & Doxology, 13-14).

Calvin didn’t view his ministry as anything to magnify. If God wishes to magnify it he will. Strive to leave something good but allow God to be the judge. Proverbs 4:23 says “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” It is easy to poison your own well with worldly ambition. Jesus said “love not the things of the world.” Ambition is a neutral thing in and of itself. We must remember that we sojourn in a culture that feeds off celebrity status. We are preprogrammed to think of ourselves first. We may even say we are giving Christ the spotlight but trying to put i in the spotlight. In your ministry you are just a hired hand. Live and work for One. Remember you are not the One. If you think you are Neo try walking up a wall or do something that you can’t do to remind yourself of that fact. Strive to leave your ego out of your ministry. Some of you like me will have to take up a cross to do it. Ask God if he will be merciful and drive the nail to kill worldly ambition and to show you where that hydra pops up its deadly head. Remember Christ is the only one that can crush the serpents head (Genesis 3:15-16).

If your heart for ministry isn’t right before God, it will fail. Trust me. That failure may be a good thing for you but you don’t want to go through it unless you have to do so. Trust me. I can’t remember who said this first but the following line sums it up well. Self-promotion & servanthood don’t mix. Real servants don’t serve for the approval or applause of others. They live for an audience of One.

It is time for some honest reflection. Ask yourself again, “How should I and how do I view my ministry.” Ask God to show you. He will.