Remember This

Having grown up in a fairly “low church” tradition, I’ve never given much consideration to the repetition of rote prayers and sentences. After reading a variety of authors who have referred to the Book of Common Prayer, I started getting more interested. Then recently I started listening occasionally to The Daily Office Podcast from the Anglican Church in North America 2019 Book of Common Prayer. Although they occasionally include readings from apocryphal books that I would not normally read, I’ve grown to appreciate the practice.

In the past, I would have been concerned that repetition of something like the Lord’s Prayer might become rote and mindless. However, if you think about all the other things that we repeat frequently and mindlessly, we could probably all use some regular infusions of truth into our thought processes. For example, there are certain TV series that I’ve watched so many times I can quote the dialog from memory. And there are plenty of negative thoughts that I rehearse more often than is wise. So it can be helpful to have biblical truths embedded in memory to bring to mind at such times.

Over and over in Scripture we are urged to remember what God has said and done:

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy… For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Ex. 20:8, 11).

“And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you” (Deut. 8:2).

“Remember the wondrous works that He has done, His miracles, and the judgments He uttered” (Psalm 105:5).

“Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me” (Isaiah 46:8-9).

“I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away… I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you” (John 16:1, 4).

We will remember things that we’ve heard repeatedly, so the only question is what those words are going to be. Will it be TV shows and secular media, or will it be Bible verses, scriptural songs, or creedal confessions that have been used in some Christian traditions for centuries? Sure, there will be times when we repeat words without thinking about them, because we’re simply human. But there will also be times when the words come from our hearts with praise, repentance, and affirmation of what we know to be true.

Let us consider how to fill our minds with the things we really need to remember.

“My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, when I remember You upon my bed, and meditate on You in the watches of the night” (Psalm 63:5-6).

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Related resources: 

Here are two songs that are often on my mind after I’ve listened to The Daily Office Podcast:

Lord, Have Mercy by Matt Boswell, Matt Papa, Aaron Keys, and James Tealy

Creed by Rich Mullins

© 2024 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Our Father

This past Sunday our church focused on the Lord’s Prayer as found in Luke 11 and Matthew 6. Most Christians probably have it memorized and recite it somewhat regularly. But have you ever thought about the fact that it uses plural pronouns throughout? It is “our Father,” not “my Father,” yet it is easy to forget that. It’s not wrong to personalize the prayer, but that is not how Jesus gave it to His disciples.

“Our Father in heaven” is a reminder that we are all part of the same family for eternity, and we have responsibility for one another’s spiritual growth and wellbeing. Together we are to be pursuing God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven” so that the Church will bring honor to His holy name. We need to pray for, encourage, equip, edify, and “exhort one another every day… that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:13).

“Give us this day our daily bread” is a reminder that we are to help provide for one another’s physical needs. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 8:14, “Your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness.” And beyond our physical needs, we have relational needs for fellowship with one another. Jennie Allen has made the comment that throughout history and still in much of the world today, meals are a communal affair, where villages gather together around the same cooking fire. In Western culture, we may struggle just to get a small family to sit down together for one meal per day, and then we wonder why we all feel so disconnected and alone. We were meant to live as “we,” not as “me.”

“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” is a challenge both individually and collectively. We see in the news how church leaders have abused their authority in various ways. That puts great strain on the church body that has to be worked through. (And for the record, forgiveness of serious abuses does not mean those people should be restored to positions of authority in any church!) At the same time, there are many smaller transgressions between members of the body that can create hard feelings. Whether it is gossip, criticism, lack of support during a time of need, conflicting priorities, or simply differing personalities, we are called to work together “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:2-3).

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Besides the ‘one anothers’ already mentioned, we also need to be praying regularly for God’s direction and protection for our local church. It is easy for churches to get sidetracked with lesser things and forget about our commission to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20). We have an enemy who loves to tempt us off the narrow road so that we become ineffective for the Kingdom of God.

We were challenged Sunday to pray the Lord’s Prayer each evening as one step toward unity in our body. May this be a reminder that we aren’t simply seeking the individual blessings of provision, protection, and forgiveness, but that we are all in this together as children of the same Father, working together for the same purpose, and helping one another along the way.

“May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 15:5-6).

 

© 2023 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Sufficient and Necessary

The lessons have been piling up lately. Actually I should say lesson, because it is all part of one larger picture. It started with comments in a couple different sermons from Sam Allberry. In one he referred to John 6:35 (ESV): “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the Bread of Life; whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst,’” and he reminded me that Jesus is the only one who truly fulfills all our needs. In the New Testament context bread was a staple of life, not an incidental item. Jesus is not just some side dish, but He is the main course. Everything else is secondary. Later I read this: “‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in Him’” (Lamentations 3:24). How often have I looked to something else to satisfy me rather than waiting on God to do what only He can do, when I’ve thought that some need or desire was more urgent than it really was?

In another sermon on Luke 22:39-46 he said,

“‘Pray that you may not enter into temptation.’ It highlights for us the importance of prayer. [The disciples] need to pray so that they will not enter into temptation, so that they will not fall, so that they will be faithful to their master. And that is no less true for us. We will face trials. In His executive summary of what we’re to pray for, Jesus tells us to pray about temptation, that we would be delivered from the evil one [Matthew 6:9-13]. We need to be people of prayer so that when the temptation comes, we will not fall into it. A verse that has been really challenging and haunting me, actually, recently on prayer is James 4:2, ‘You do not have because you do not ask God.’ You do not stand because you do not pray.”

I wonder how often I have missed out on God’s provision, protection, and deliverance because I have not asked Him. How often have I fallen because I didn’t pray or because I was praying for something less than God’s best?

As I’m reading through Isaiah again this verse caught my attention. “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for Him” (30:18). And He not only waits to be gracious, but He also says, “I will rejoice in doing them good…” (Jeremiah 32:41). I wonder how long God has been waiting to show me grace and mercy and do good for me while my attention has been focused somewhere else.

It’s interesting that by showing mercy God exalts Himself. Through encountering His mercy and grace we see God for who He really is and we’re reminded of who we are both with Him and apart from Him. On our own we are weak, sinful, hungry, and needy. But in Christ we have strength, forgiveness, satisfaction, and fulfillment. It’s easy to forget that Christ is sufficient for all our needs. I need frequent reminders of His sufficiency, but those reminders usually come in the form of tripping and falling flat on my face. That’s always a good time and place to pray.

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13).

© 2017 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated all images are copyright free from pixabay.com.

A Prayer Refresher

I’ve read several things recently on the subject of prayer in general, and I’ve been thinking about the Lord’s Prayer in particular. I don’t come from a tradition that recites the Lord’s Prayer on a regular basis, so I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it. I’ve also been cautious because there are other traditions that use the Lord’s Prayer in rote repetition that can quickly lose all meaning. However, since these words came from Jesus Himself, perhaps they are worthy of a little extra attention.

It hadn’t really occurred to me before that there are just three main petitions in the prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts… And lead us not into temptation” (Matthew 6:11-13 ESV). On the prayer for our daily bread, C.S. Lewis wrote,

“It means, doesn’t it, all we need for the day—‘things requisite and necessary as well for the body as for the soul.’ I should hate to make this clause ‘purely religious’ by thinking of ‘spiritual’ needs alone” (Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer, 27).

While we can drift to one extreme or the other, I think there is a greater tendency to focus on physical needs rather than spiritual needs. I was struck by the fact that Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life; whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). In a counterintuitive way, praying for our daily bread is a prayer for more of Jesus. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matthew 6:6). He is sufficient for all our deepest needs, though we may not always think so. I am challenged to pray that I would find my fulfillment in Him alone.

Thinking about the request for forgiveness, again the answer is found in the person of Christ. Because of His death and resurrection, the Old Testament sacrificial system was no longer needed. “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh” (Hebrews 10:19-20). Following the Sermon on the Mount, we get this brief response, “The crowds were astonished at His teaching, for He was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:28-29). No doubt this prayer for forgiveness without corresponding sacrifices must have raised a few eyebrows. I am thankful that forgiveness is just a prayer away!

The third petition, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” I suspect is the least used part of the Lord’s Prayer, though it should be significant to us. We all need protection from temptation. Paul said, “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). I’ve learned from many falls that it is far easier and more effective to pray for protection from temptation than to pray for deliverance once temptation has already appeared. I have no idea how many times God has diverted me away from temptation—probably far more than I could even imagine. The frequent appeal for protection serves to draw my attention back to Christ and has increased my dependence on His strength in my weakness.

Although the Lord’s Prayer is so named because it was spoken by Jesus, the fact is that every part of it points us back to our Lord and Savior through whom we receive the Bread of Life, forgiveness of the guilt of sin, and deliverance from the power of sin. Apart from Him they are just empty words.

“Yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

© 2017 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated all images are copyright free from pixabay.com. 

Keep Fighting

As happens to me periodically, I’ve received similar messages from multiple sources in recent weeks. The first source was Tim Keller’s book Prayer. He was talking about the Lord’s Prayer and the fact that the provision of needs and deliverance from temptation are daily prayers, not just occasional or spur of the moment prayers. Soon after that Ron Thomas made a similar comment during his Sunday school lesson on Genesis 3, as he urged us to frequently ask ourselves “Where are you?” Most recently, I read John Piper’s short book Sanctification in the Everyday, in which he writes about fighting sin. He says that he learned to fight sexual temptation with aggressive, conscious, daily opposition. However:

“What I realized was that I was not applying any of this same gospel vigilance—what Peter O’Brien calls ‘continuous, sustained, strenuous effort’ against my most besetting sins. I was strangely passive and victim-like. I had the unarticulated sense (mistakenly) that these sins (unlike sexual lust) should be defeated more spontaneously.”

I’ve found the same to be true in my life. Until these themes converged upon me, I’d never really considered the need to pray regularly for deliverance from evil even though that was part of the Lord’s Prayer. At some subconscious level I believed that frequent repetition of the Lord’s Prayer or any other prayer would become rote and useless. But, like Piper, I also mistakenly believed that temptation didn’t need to be fought until it arrived, so I wasn’t terribly proactive about it. I had a vague idea of what I would do when temptation came, but that’s about it. I’ve repeatedly read 1 Corinthians 10:13 (ESV), “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” For whatever reason, I assumed that meant I didn’t need to look for the way of escape until the temptation came.

I began to learn the truth over the last year out of a sense of desperation as I pleaded with the Lord to protect me from temptation, because I knew I was too weak to fight it myself. These recent messages have helped to solidify and verbalize what experience has shown to be true. It also gives fresh meaning to Jesus’s words in Matthew 7:7-11, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you… How much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” And James 4:2, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” When a child asks for something that they want and need, parents are delighted to provide. So also God wants to provide for us, but He won’t force us to take something we don’t yet want or know that we need.

God wants us to be victorious over sin, but so long as we are trusting in ourselves to fight temptation when it comes, we will continue to be disappointed. We have a real enemy who wants to keep us feeling helpless and defeated, so we need the power of our Savior to set us free. He’s already done the hard work of defeating sin and death, but we have to learn a daily reliance upon His strength rather than our own. It’s not often that God provides instantaneous deliverance from a temptation, though there are those who have found freedom from drugs and alcohol and the like. Most of the time it is a slow growth in learning to depend on Him, and that doesn’t come until we realize our own weakness.

The fight against sin is not one we are meant to battle in our own power. This battle isn’t going to be quick and easy, but we are assured that one day we will see the ultimate defeat of our enemy. Until then we need to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, keep putting on the armor of God, and keep fighting all day every day. “Will not God give justice to His elect, who cry to Him day and night?” (Luke 18:7).

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” –Ephesians 6:10-11