And forgive us our debts…

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Our Father who art in heaven,

Hallowed be Thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our debts…

Yes, we’re spending extra time on this one, because I don’t think we get it. At least I don’t. I can’t speak for you, but I can swear to you that I rarely get to the bottom of my own sin. Here’s how I can tell. There are people who I think are worse sinners than me, and people whose sin is worse than mine. Come on, when was the last time you thought, well at least I’m not that bad? Well, I’ve got news for you — for all of us — we are. We are that bad. In fact, we are worse than the worst we know.

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Forgive us our sins

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Our Father who art in heaven,

Hallowed be Thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our debts…

I’m sticking with the King James Version because that’s how most of us have memorized this prayer. But “debt” is the part of the prayer that has more than one version… “debts,” “transgressions,” and in the Luke version of the prayer, it is simply, “Forgive us our sins.” I’m going to go with “sin” since that is the easiest to understand. Besides, “sin” needs a comeback.

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Give us this day…

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Our Father who art in heaven,

Hallowed be Thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread

This is the most practical part of this prayer — the closest thing to most of our spontaneous prayers where we bring our daily needs to the Lord. These are the types of things Jesus tells us elsewhere not to worry about when He says, “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and He will give you everything you need” (Matthew 6:31-33). If He said this, then why did He include this request in His prayer? Probably because He knows us so well.

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Thy will be done

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Our Father who art in heaven,

Hallowed be Thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done

On earth as it is in heaven.

In our last Catch, we found out that we are the kingdom, because the kingdom lives in us; we carry the kingdom wherever we go, and we bring the kingdom to the world in the form of those we introduce to Jesus and those we disciple.

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Thy kingdom come

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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.

Thy kingdom come…

Wait a minute… didn’t the kingdom of God come already? Didn’t Jesus announce that the kingdom was here — that it came with Him? “Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, “Here it is,” or “There it is,” because the kingdom of God is in your midst’” (Luke 17:20-21). The implication in what Jesus said here is that the kingdom of God was already there and they didn’t know it. They were waiting for a notable event and it’s already happened. In fact, they are talking to the kingdom of God right now and they don’t know it. The kingdom of God can’t be observed; it can only be experienced.

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It’s a little like the Jesus Movement. It’s already here, but it’s not something that can be observed. No-one can say, “Here it is,” or “There it is.” But you’ll know it when you experience it. The kingdom of God came with Jesus. Jesus is the king, and where the king is, there is the kingdom.

So what does it mean for us to be praying for the kingdom to come? It means for Jesus to be known and experienced by more and more people. We pray for the kingdom to be expanded — for more people to come to know Jesus. To introduce  the gospel of welcome — grace turned outward — to everyone, everywhere is for the kingdom to come. We don’t only pray for this to happen; we are the kingdom, and we are here. So how are we doing? We not only pray for the kingdom of God to come, we bring it. We are the kingdom. So the big question is: what are you and I doing to make this part of the Lord’s prayer come true?

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Holy, holy, holy

Our Father who art in heaven

Hallowed be thy name

We start our prayer with the stability of the Father in a place of authority in heaven, and then we praise Him and give Him due reverence. We affirm who He is. He is the Holy One. “There is none beside Thee.”

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty

Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee

Holy, holy, holy, merciful and Mighty

God in three Persons, blessed Trinity

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Our Father, who is in control

Our Father, who art in heaven…

We’re going to spend the next few days going over how Jesus taught us to pray. This is foundational — it is bedrock to our faith — and we need that right now. When so much seems to be flying apart, we need something solid to hold onto.

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What to do when the country is deeply polarized and someone is shooting at one our presidential candidates

These are tense times for our country. Everyone is on pins and needles. You can see it in their eyes. There’s a little sliver of fear right behind the eye causing the eye to dart when a sound interrupts whatever is going on. Would that we all had Secret Service protection around the clock.

Our election is right around the corner and we’ve already had an assassination attempt on one of the candidates and a geriatric attempt on the other. This is a time when there are simply no guarantees anywhere. And all this in a time when the polarization in this country has never been more pronounced.

What to do?

It’s easy to think any one of us is too insignificant to do anything about this, but that is simply not true. We can live differently. And whether it effects any change on those around us, it will definitely change us. We can offer the opposite of what is being dished out in large portions on the internet and other forms of the media. We could start by answering hate with love, returning good for evil, combat judgment with forgiveness, mercy for revenge, grace over a grudge, prayer instead of power, and gratitude for greed. Each one of these is nothing short of a major transformation. In every case, one of these choices comes easy because it is natural, fleshly, of the earth, while the other is spiritual, faith-driven, and of heaven. These are profound changes and none of them are possible without a radical change of heart that can only be accomplished by the Holy Spirit in us.

I’m trying to focus on these changes, even with attitudes I keep to myself. Who does it help if I condemn someone in my heart, but don’t tell anyone. I am only hurting myself, and keeping my heart from being soft. Besides, we become what we think in our heart. “For as he thinks within himself, so he is” (Proverbs 23:7). Change starts with us.

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Gateway to heaven

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Love Him in the morning when you see the sun a-rising

Love Him in the evening ‘cause He took you through the day

And in the in-between time when you feel the pressure coming

Remember that He loves you and He promises to stay

Yesterday, I no sooner saw the sun a-rising than I found myself immediately thrust into the pressure of the in-between time. No time to feel it coming; it was already there. Marti was forced to endure two emergency dentist appointments and the pain of a two-hour root canal surgery made more difficult by multiple complications. I, in the meantime, was forced to endure the pain of trying to figure out how we were going to pay for all this pain. We got home with barely enough time to acknowledge the Lord for taking us through the day, but you know, He did.

Looking at earthly dilemmas through the eyes of the Lord, makes problems shrink down to a size where they become more manageable. My anxiety pales when compared to the eternal weight of glory that God is building into all our lives. (2 Corinthians 4:17)  For our momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.”

So what this little song does is keep us in communion with God throughout our days, however difficult or mundane, and in being in communion with God, we are tied to a perspective that goes far beyond our small earthly existence. So you see, this song was never a little ditty; it is an ethereal anthem that opens the gateway to heaven and life beyond this planet. It puts us in our place — in our eternal place.

This morning, in our weekly Vanguard zoom call, I had four grown men standing up and doing the hand motions to the “All Day Song.” (Mike High was outside on his property fixing a leak in his irrigation system when he stopped and did the hand motions with us. I wonder what his neighbors thought if they caught him waving his arm back and forth while standing next to a hole in the ground. I love that thought.) And then, one by one, each one of us told a story about a morning, and an evening, and an in-between time of our experience this week. Suddenly, in the telling, nothing was mundane anymore; it was all twice the size of anyone’s memory. For there, standing in our rooms or in some field, speaking not out of some principle or doctrine, or creed, but just out of God interacting in the stories of our lives, we found ourselves suddenly standing at the gateway to heaven.

“Love Him in the morning…”

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‘…and He promises to stay’

Love Him in the morning when you see the sun arising

Love Him in the evening ‘cause He took you through the day

And in the in-between time when you feel the pressure coming

Remember that He loves you and He promises to stay

– from the “All Day Song” by John Fischer

My most well-known song has gotten a bad rap all of it’s life … from none other than me. I have always said it was too simple, a little ditty, and it was never finished. After all, it only has one verse. I always intended to write another one, but never got around to it. I boast about carrying it around for months in my back pocket until I pulled it out spontaneously for a Sunday night church audience and the rest is history. It soon met the fate of other John Fischer songs that don’t die, they just go to camp.

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