Heavenly Father, I praise You for giving us a prayer from Jesus to teach us how to pray. I praise You for the morning and I claim it for You. I praise You for trials for they make us stronger. I praise You for Emma who is in college and allows me to write her as I use to write my son Philip. I praise You that I can pass the torch on to my cousin’s daughter.
Holy Spirit the disciples watched and walked with Jesus for three years and the one thing they asked directly was, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” [Luke 11:1] So, Jesus said to them, “When you pray, say: Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come; Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” [Luke 11:2-4]
Holy Spirit help me to understand that “Our Father” has a lot of meaning in it. First, I claim through salvation that I am a son of God. Second, Our means that I am not the only child and I do not walk this walk alone. I have a brother and sisterhood that transgresses color, race, nationality, and denomination. If we are saved through grace, and we are attempting to walk with Christ we are family. We may look different, face different trials, speak differently, may attend different churches with different concepts but we are all Your children. Not everyone is. Even though I know You created all, Your word says, “Yet to all who receive Him, He gives power to become sons (and daughters) of God, to those who believe His name, who are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” ONLY Those Who are BORN AGAIN are Your children. To this, I am thankful and feel so unworthy. I know when I pray as Christ taught, You are OUR FATHER.
Now I’m returning to you. I’m saying these things in the world’s hearing so my people can experience My joy completed in them. I gave them Your word; the godless world hated them because of it, because they didn’t join the world’s ways. Just as I didn’t join the world’s ways. I’m not asking that you take them out of the world but that you guard them from the Evil One. They are no more defined by the world than I am defined by the world. Make them holy—consecrated—with the truth; Your word is consecrating truth. In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world. I’m consecrating myself for their sakes so they’ll be truth-consecrated in their mission. I’m praying not only for them but also for those who will believe in me because of them and their witness about me. The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, So they might be one heart and mind with us. Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me. The same glory you gave me, I gave them, so they’ll be as unified and together as we are—I in them and you in me. Then they’ll be mature in this oneness, and give the godless world evidence that you’ve sent me and loved them in the same way you’ve loved me. Father, I want those you gave me to be with me, right where I am, so they can see my glory, the splendor you gave me, having loved me long before there ever was a world. Righteous Father, the world has never known you. But I have known you, and these disciples know that you sent me on this mission. I have made your very being known to them—who you are and what you do—and continue to make it known, so that your love for me might be in them exactly as I am in them. (Amen) John 17:13-26, the Message