Prayer Power (Part 4) – The Lord’s Prayer
March 12th, 2008
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by admin · Filed Under: Guidance · Prayer · Spiritual Health
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.
Let us read the prayer together:
Jesus says, “Pray then like this:
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.
The first words of the prayer itself are: “Our Father”
In just those two words he defines our relationship with God and with one another. It’s not just “My Father;” it’s “Our Father.” It’s the same God for everyone; there is no inequality in our relationship with God, no one has more of God than anyone else.
It is “Our Father,” no matter what our race or religion or upbringing, no matter what our background, we all have the same Source and resource.
Some people have difficulty thinking of God as Father because of their experience with their own earthly father. So it speaks highly of Jesus’ relationship with his father that he could think of it as being similar to the closeness with his heavenly father. In referring to the Father he said “Abba,” which in Aramaic is the same as us saying “Daddy.” It’s a relationship which the poet says is “closer than breathing and nearer than hands and feet.”
The “Father” is the Source, the source of our abundance, the source of our good, and the source of all things.
“Who art in heaven.” Where is heaven? Jesus started off his ministry by saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” And later he said, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.”
“Our Father who art in heaven.” Our Father who art within you!
There’s a story of a six-year-old girl who had gone to church for the first time. She had attended Sunday school at the early time and then met her father to go into church with him. She came out of Sunday school with a big smile on her face. Her father said, “How was Sunday school, did you enjoy it?” She said, “It was wonderful. I found out where God is. I always knew that God was in everything around me, that God was in the trees and the flowers and all around me, but now I know that God is also within me and that I can talk to him at any time.”
“Our Father who art in heaven.” Heaven is within us, it’s in that invisible realm of being where God dwells. The presence of God is equally present at all places in space and time at all times . . . within you. So that’s where we have to look, isn’t it? Within ourselves. All things start from within. That’s where our source is, within. God is transcendent and God is immanent; and we make our connection within, within ourselves.
George Fox, the 17th century founder of the Quakers, had this realization which he called “the withinness of God.” He talked about the “teacher within.”
He said when he had the realization and that God dwelt within, that he could make contact with the divine presence or divine essence within himself, he began to tremble and quake. That’s where the name “Quakers” came from. He began to quake with awe at the realization of the truth that we meet God within ourselves, in the garden of our own being, our own mind, our own heart. That’s where we find God.
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name”
Holy and sacred is your nature; “hallowed” means holy or wholeness. God is wholeness. When we contact and realize the essence of God’s presence within us, then we experience wholeness. We experience the presence within us as a holy place.
Remember the words to Moses, “Take off your shoes, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” We are made in the image and likeness of God, so the true essence of our being, too, is holy and sacred. When we discover God, we discover ourselves; when we discover our true self, we discover the wholeness of God.
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Holy, sacred, is thy nature.
“Thy kingdom,” the kingdom of the within, come into our awareness, come into manifestation. “Thy will be done, on earth, as it already is in heaven.” It is pointing us to the realization of the universal truth of life, the key to life, that all things come from within out. Nothing changes on the outer until we change on the inner.
“Thy kingdom come.” As we come into that awareness, as we model the consciousness that Jesus had, the kingdom comes. The kingdom of the presence of God comes into our awareness. And then as in heaven, so it is on earth. “It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” said Jesus.
No change happens until it happens within us, so the essence of prayer is the interior change that takes place as we realize the presence of God, as we come into that understanding. “When you pray, come with this understanding: As within, so without.” As in the kingdom, so it is on earth. All things start within us; all change begins there.
Our prayers are answered as our inner being is in alignment with God. “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
God’s will for us is always good, always absolute, unchanging good. So we seek to align our will with God’s will, realizing truly there is only one will even though we are given free choice and use that will in many different ways. As we align our will with God’s will, we also align ourselves with the truth of God’s good coming forth into our lives.
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is – as it already is – in heaven.”
What comes next?
“Give us this day our daily bread”
What is this daily bread? Sometimes we think that our daily bread is something we need in the outer today. And so we are saying to God, “Give us this day that which we need, all those things we need in our day.” But the daily bread is not really that. Remember Jesus said, “I have meat that you know not of.” Or, I have food that you know not of. What was that food? The food, or daily bread, is a consciousness of God.
Unity minister Rev. Jim Rosemergy suggests there is a silent “you” before that passage. So it becomes an acknowledgement that God is our source: “You give us this day our daily bread.” Again, the prayer is modeling the consciousness: “You give us this day a consciousness of your presence.”
As we turn to the presence, we gain the daily bread, we gain the consciousness. And out of that consciousness come all our answers. You see, the answer we are seeking is a consciousness of God. Then into manifestation comes fulfillment of our need. But our answer is contained in the daily bread, in the consciousness of God.
In the prayer we then come to the understanding that we must forgive.
Or, forgive us as we also have forgiven others. It’s not saying that God is going to withhold love from us because we haven’t forgiven; but the very fact of giving opens us to the creative power, the expression of God’s love in our minds and our hearts. Because if we have hatred or resentment, if we are holding ill will toward one person, we are separated from God by that much.
We cannot be loving toward God if we have resentment or ill will toward some person. So in order to open our hearts to a consciousness of God and the true answers for our lives we must also be forgiving.
As we forgive others then the forgiveness takes place within us too. The “others’ also include us; we often don’t forgive ourselves as we have been in the past. We look at that other self and we say, “I can’t forgive myself for what I did.” But if we don’t forgive, then it’s just the same as holding resentment or ill will against some other person. To be able to let that love of God flow in and through our hearts, we have to forgive.
“And leave us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil”
Again if you think of a silent “you” in front of that, you would hear “You leave us not in temptation, and you deliver us from evil.” In other words, God does not lead us into trouble; God delivers us, all the time. This is the true consciousness of God’s presence in our lives, that God is the deliverer.
God doesn’t give us problems. We might say, “Why did God do this to me?” God didn’t do it to you, but God will deliver you out of it. God will bring the answer for you; the consciousness of God will bring the answer for you.
What is the temptation when we’re seeking to get into a consciousness of God? What is the temptation we can get caught up in?
The temptation is to begin to look at the things that are wrong, at the negative side of life, at our weaknesses. The temptation is always to look to the darkness. But God delivers us from that.
As we get into the consciousness of oneness with God we begin to see answers instead of problems, we begin to see the solutions, we begin to see the light instead of the darkness, and we begin to see the positive side of things instead of a negative side of life.
The temptations are those things we get caught up in, such as not being honest with ourselves, like denying the truth of our being when we are blocking things off from ourselves, or maybe when we are projecting on others those things we don’t like to see in ourselves. Those are the kind of temptations we get caught up in.
The way we move out of those temptations is to recognize that a consciousness of God brings light, brings answers, and brings the truth. So no matter what the problem, the answer is always a consciousness of God, or the experience of God.
That’s the understanding Jesus is seeking to bring us, and that’s where he leaves it.
The last part of the prayer was added on: “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.” Of course, it sums up the prayer very well but it was added on later by a scribe from an earlier scripture. But it is the truth, and it is recognition of the truth of God as the power. There is only one presence and one power in all the universe, God the good omnipotent. That’s what it’s reaffirming for us.
The answers come to us out of the glory of God’s presence. Our answers to prayer come out of the consciousness of God. Actually that consciousness or the experience of God’s presence is itself our answer. That’s what Jesus is trying to get us to understand, that the experience of God’s presence is always our answer. “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” (Matt. 7:7) This is the real secret behind “The Secret.”
That “it” which will be opened to us, and that which we will receive, is a consciousness of God. If we ask, if we move into an awareness of God’s presence, it is always opened to us. We will always receive. The answer is there.
And out of the answer, then comes the fulfillment of the need that we have in our daily life.
Jesus is saying, “If we get into the consciousness of God, if we experience God’s presence, if we move into that place that has been called “the secret place of the Most High” or into the “Silence” where we experience just a few moments of deep silence, into the reality of God’s presence where nothing else is there – no thoughts, no feelings – but just the Silence, then out of a few moments of that can come a transformation of our lives. All of the answers we need will be forthcoming in the outer. As it is in heaven, so it is on earth.
If we are aligning our will with God’s will, we can move around in our lives in just a normal way. We don’t have to be straining or striving for answers. We first take time to get still, daily, and seek to feel the experience of God’s presence, then we move about our lives in a normal way and the answer is then forthcoming in our outer life as the fulfilling of our needs.
We become ever more aware that God’s activity is present in everything that happens in our lives; we may not always experience an answer during our prayer itself, but as we go out into our world our answer will manifest in many different ways.
Recently someone told me that they had been seeking an answer and they had been going to a lot of different people. Then they read a paragraph on seeking God’s presence just before they left the house and went to an office. On the door of the secretary’s office, it said “Enquire Within.” And it was enough of a reminder to that person to go within.
It seems like everything speaks to you once you make that connection with God’s presence within. It might be a billboard of a person pointing and saying “I want you!” Or anything can speak to you; it might be a friend, a book, or anything. But it is always the activity of God coming forth in manifestation in answer to the experience you’ve already had, the answer of your divine connection.
Let me finish up with a little poem from Longfellow, called “Christos.”
“Let us then labor for an inward stillness and an inner feeling,
That perfect silence where the lips and heart are still
And we no longer entertain our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions,
But God alone speaks in us;
And we wait in singleness of heart
That we may know His will,
And in the silence of our spirits that we may do His will,
And do that only.”
God is blessing you, right now.
Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham
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Rev. Alan Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-five years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, “Spiritual Solutions,” and/or “Rich Words,” weekday inspirational quotes, at www.alanrowbotham.com
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