Spiritual Solutions

Sometimes we try to change one another. We want the other person to become what we would like them to be.

We even do that in prayer too. We want to change the other person, to give them our wisdom, and to have them to see it our way.

Whenever I pray for other people, I notice that when a change occurs in me then a change often occurs in the situation I’m praying about.

If we are to pray for others we must first pray for ourselves, putting ourselves consciously in God’s presence. When we make that contact within ourselves, within our own hearts, then the situations in our lives are affected in positive ways.

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True Life is a Real Awareness of the Presence of God

Jesus said, “I am come that you may have life, and have it abundantly.” He is not talking about mere existence; he’s talking about a vibrant, vital life where we have a sense of the awareness of God.

If we don’t have at least some sense, or some awareness, of God’s presence in our life we are not really alive. We need to awaken to the realization of God’s presence in every part, every event, and every moment of our life. God is ever-present; there is no spot where God is not.

Even though we are inundated with outside influences we can move toward the realization of the greater influence of the power of God that is present in our lives.

We are influenced by outside things, media and all the many things that we are involved with every day. But if we realize God’s presence we can always be influenced in a greater way. We can turn to the greater realization of God’s good in our lives.

We have shared in past messages the importance of meditation. Meditation is really important, because it is what connects us to the realization of God’s presence. We make a direct connection in meditation, in stillness, in the Silence, and our prayers keep us connected to the realization of God’s presence in our life.

But we need more than that; we need to be able to maintain that consciousness in the midst of our everyday activities. It’s all right to have a realization of God’s presence when we have our time of meditation and there’s nothing disturbing us. We feel centered, peaceful, and attuned with God’s presence. But then we go out into our everyday world and sometimes get so caught up in it and in the outer experience of life instead of life itself, the life of God within us moving through 
and underlying every experience. God’s presence is always there, and it’s easy to forget that.

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Jesus said, “When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, praying to be seen by others. . . . and in praying do not heap up empty phrases, thinking that you will be heard for your many words.” Then he pointed out a way to pray, which we have come to know as the Lord’s Prayer. But the Lord’s Prayer itself has often taken the form of vain repetition, and we rattle it off without really thinking about it.

It’s probably the best known prayer, certainly in our Christian heritage. But perhaps it’s not known totally. So our focus here is to really get to know the Lord’s Prayer, to focus in on what the different parts of the prayer really mean to us.  

The prayer is really an example or a model of the interior life of the one we know as Jesus the Christ, who attained the full consciousness of oneness with God and fully expressed the presence of God in his life.

So the Lord’s Prayer models for us the expression of the interior life. In it we get a rare glimpse of the consciousness of one who experiences the presence of God at all times.  

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,

  As we also have forgiven our debtors;

And lead us not into temptation,

  But deliver us from evil.” (Matt. 6:9-13)

Then Jesus begins to expand upon the prayer. But let’s take a deeper look at the prayer before us.  He starts off with a suggestion. “Pray then like this.” Or “Pray then after this manner.” Or “Pray then with this understanding.” You see, not with just this format, but with this understanding.
The first words of the prayer itself are: “Our Father”  

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