Tag Archive for Lord’s Prayer

ThinkSingPray

2019-09-23 ThinkSingPray No comments

ThinkSingPray
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The Lord’s Prayer 8

Monday –      Deliver Us from Evil #1
Hymn: Keep Us from All Evil (recording) (printed)

Tuesday –     Deliver Us from Evil #2
Hymn: Do You Talk to the Lord? (recording) (printed)

Wednesday – The Closing
Hymn: Great Lord of All Reality (recording) (printed)

Thursday –    Look to Jesus #1
Hymn: Each Moment by Faith (recording) (printed)

Friday –          Look to Jesus #2
Hymn: Breath of His Love (recording) (printed)

Saturday –     For Today
Hymn: Jesus’ Life Is All a Promise (recording) (printed)

for more, visit
ThinkSingPray
at KenBible.com

ThinkSingPray

2019-09-16 ThinkSingPray No comments

ThinkSingPray
about
The Lord’s Prayer 7

Monday –      Keep the Focus on Him
Hymn: Our Father Exalted (recording) (printed)

Tuesday –     Forgiveness #1
Hymn: Song of Confession (recording) (printed)

Wednesday – Forgiveness #2
Hymn: The Joy of Forgiveness (recording) (printed)

Thursday –    Daily Forgiveness
Hymn: Daily Confession (recording) (printed)

Friday –          Hold on to Love

Saturday –     I Bring That One to You
Hymn: Your Thoughts, Your Words (recording) (printed)

for more, visit
ThinkSingPray
at KenBible.com

ThinkSingPray

2019-09-02 ThinkSingPray No comments

ThinkSingPray
about
The Lord’s Prayer 5

Monday –      As It Is in Heaven #1

Tuesday –     As It Is in Heaven #2

Wednesday – As It Is in Heaven #3
Hymn: God Alone (recording) (printed)

Thursday –    Father, Glorify Yourself through This Need
Hymn: Father, We Come (recording) (printed)

Friday –          God Will Be Exalted
Hymn: God Will Be Exalted (recording) (printed)

Saturday –     Your Kingdom Come, Father!
Hymn: Your Kingdom, Your Power (recording) (printed)

for more, visit
ThinkSingPray
at KenBible.com

Knowing the Transcendent God: My Personal Story 3

2019-04-12 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

As we begin looking at our magnificent, transcendent God, I am reflecting on how He has patiently drawn me toward Himself. Here is the third of four major turning points.

In my mid-forties, God challenged me to begin spending more time with Him in prayer. He specifically asked me to begin using the Lord’s Prayer as the pattern for my praying. I had heard speakers suggest that before, and it had struck me as artificial. So when God asked me to do it, it took me by surprise. But I began to obey.

Then a few years later, in 1998, I reduced my work load to half-time in order to have more time to write. That schedule change took away my long-established means of daily exercise, so I found myself looking for another exercise routine. In early 1999, at age 49, I began taking long daily walks – an hour or more every weekday. Those walks soon became my prayer time.

Those extended prayer times have done more to enrich my life and my relationship with the Living God than anything else. The first half of the Lord’s Prayer, applied to my daily situation and prayed from the heart, has been deeply formative in the way I think of God and relate to Him.

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:9-10, NIV)

In the early years of those walks, I usually walked outside, alone, in nature. Spending all that time speaking with God the way Jesus taught us to pray, while immersed in His creation, continued God’s process of drawing me into Himself.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: As I Pray
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Our Daily Bread

2017-07-24 Devotional with Hymn No comments

“Give us today our daily bread.”
(Matthew 6:11, NIV)

When the people of Israel were traveling through a vast desert and were hungry, God gave them “daily bread” (Exodus 16:11-31). It was a flake-like substance called manna. Each morning they had to gather a supply for that one day. If they tried to keep enough for the next day, it rotted. But on the day before the Sabbath, they were to gather enough for two days. God didn’t want them to have to work on the Sabbath.

Manna was a daily provision, sufficient for any need but impossible to hoard. God could have provided for their hunger any way He chose. Why would He choose this way? He was teaching them to depend on Him every day, one day at a time (see Deuteronomy 8:3).

Give us today our daily bread. Out of the entire Lord’s Prayer, only this one petition covers the wants that normally fill our prayers. Doesn’t this “one wish” seem small and unsatisfying? After all, most of us aren’t worried about starving, at least not today.

We want more. We want enough to feel secure. We want enough to relax a little in what we have. God wants the opposite. He wants to keep us resting in Him alone. He will not grant His children any security outside of Himself.

Why? He knows that a constant, close relationship with Him is the key to our happiness and well-being. Daily dependence teaches and forms that relationship. None of us ever graduate from His school of dependence. He will not let you hoard everything you need, and you cannot see the future. Any security you think you’ve grasped is only an illusion. He will always and forever be your only security and your only supply. Even in the wealth and abundance of heaven, He Himself will be the only source of every blessing.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Our Daily Bread
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Keep the Focus on Him

2016-07-19 Devotional with Hymn One comment

Many years ago God called me to use the Lord’s Prayer as the pattern for my own daily prayer. In the years following, I spent most of my time in the first half of the prayer:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:9-10, NIV)

I gravitated to that first half of the prayer because every morning I crave seeing Him again. When I focus on God, high and lifted up, everything else falls into place.

Often I spent less time on the second half of the prayer:

Give us today 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 the evil one. (Matthew 6:11-13, NIV)

After focusing on the transcendent God during the first part of my prayer, I felt uncomfortable shifting the focus to our needs in the second half. Yes, I was still talking to God, but now my heart seemed focused on us, not Him. I came to realize that this made the second half of the prayer feel smaller and less meaningful.

Then one morning God showed me that I should pray the second half of the prayer like the first, with my focus still on Him. For example:

Father, we joyfully depend on You for all our needs today.
Forgive us for our sins,and
we will share Your forgiveness with all who wrong us.
We don’t want anything to come between You and us.
Deliver us from temptation and from the evil one.
Keep our hearts and minds on You alone.

We can keep our focus on Him, even while presenting our needs. We can confess our dependence on Him out of a burning desire to live in Him more constantly and completely. When we pray with our hearts fixed on God alone, the entire Lord’s Prayer becomes an act of deep, life-centered worship. We come seeking, not His gifts, but Him.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Our Father Exalted
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

For Today

2016-07-10 Devotional with Hymn No comments

Father, I only want what Your
holy,
joyful,
loving,
all-sufficient Son wanted:
only Your glory,
only Your Kingdom,
only Your will.
Gain or loss,
success or failure,
need or abundance,
sunlight or shadow,
this is my focus,
this is my desire:
Your smile and
Your approval.

Your Son was sure of
Your presence,
Your abundance, and
Your loving faithfulness.
Thus He didn’t fret about tomorrow.
He only needed bread for today.
Father, that’s all I need as well.

Your Son came to pour out on us
Your forgiveness,
Your cleansing,
Your holiness,
Your impenetrable keeping from all evil.
I will live joyfully and confidently in
that forgiveness,
that cleansing,
that safe keeping.

Father, as I trust You today,
I am in Christ, and
He is in me, and
we are in You
every moment.
Praise be to You, our Father, forever and ever!

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Today, Father
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Turned Toward God

2016-03-29 Devotional with Hymn, Prayer One comment

Recently this old hymn has been on my mind:

Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire,
Unuttered or expressed,
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.

Prayer is the burden of a sigh,
The falling of a tear,
The upward glancing of an eye,
When none but God is near.
            (“Prayer Is the Soul’s Sincere Desire,” by James Montgomery, 1818)

I’ve found this description of prayer true to my own experience. Prayer is turning toward God.

My morning walks are my prayer time. For twenty-plus years I have used the Lord’s Prayer as the outline for my prayers, but even so, my daily prayers are quite varied. Some days He leads me more toward petition. Some days, praise. Sometimes I sing as much as I speak. Some days my praying involves lots of thinking and reflecting. Some days He even leads me to write as I talk to Him.

But consistently, the attitude that nurtures my heart is the attitude of the Lord’s Prayer:

Father, Your glory,
Your kingdom,
Your will.
Your bread for today,
Your forgiveness,
Your keeping.

Prayer is the single-mindedness of a heart turned toward God, desiring God, talking to God, listening to God, seeking Him alone.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Reign in Me
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Deliver Us from All Evil

2016-02-25 Devotional with Hymn, One with Our Father No comments

from the book, ONE WITH OUR FATHER 

John 13:18-30

When Jesus had said this, He became troubled in spirit, and testified and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, that one of you will betray Me.” (John 13:21, NASB)

Judas was one of the chosen twelve,
with a special relationship with Jesus.
Yet he became one of the
most heinous traitors of our entire race.
He met a horrific end.

To us, he is a reminder to keep looking to God.
Don’t let your heart and mind wander into
bitterness or preoccupation with lesser things.

Above all else,
guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it. (Proverbs 4:23, NIV)

That is why Jesus teaches us to daily ask the Father,
Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one. (Matthew 6:13, NIV)

Without God’s grace, sin is
a debt we cannot pay and
a trap we cannot avoid.
We are opposed and surrounded by
spiritual forces much stronger than us.
We are weak, and
our enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion
looking for someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8, NIV)

But the one who is in you is greater than
the one who is in the world. (1 John 4:4, NIV)
Deliverance is always ours
as we trust our Heavenly Father who is
always able,
always with us, and
always in us.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Keep Us from All Evil
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Christ Helps Me Pray

2016-01-05 Devotional with Hymn No comments

In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8:26-27, NASB)

Father, the more I talk to You,
the more I realize that
I don’t know how to talk to You.
I want to better know how to pray.

I look to Your Son Jesus as my example, and
I hear such beautiful, personal faith in His prayers, such
trust,
submission, and
worship.
But His only prayers I see recorded in the gospels are
a few prayed on special occasions,
intentionally formed for His disciples to hear.
How did He speak to You when
You and He were alone?
On those occasions when He prayed all night,
what did He say?
What did You talk about?

But Father, You show me that
Jesus helps our prayers in far greater ways than this.

When His disciples asked Him how to pray,
He gave a short prayer that models how we are to speak to You.
Through that prayer, He taught us to speak to You
as a child speaking to his or her Father,
simply,
honestly,
trustingly,
with our hearts turned to You.

But what’s more, Jesus has given us His own Spirit.
This Spirit leads us to You and
binds us to You,
as Father and child.
His new life cries out to You from within us,
“Daddy!
Father!”

Your Son Jesus helps us pray,
not by leaving us His prayers written on a page,
but by breathing His own Spirit within us.
This Spirit helps us pray
when we don’t know how.
He takes our
simple,
childish,
fumbling prayers
and speaks directly to You on our behalf
as only He can.

So Father, I come to You as Your Son taught us.
I come as a child,
pretending to be nothing else.
I come with no hiding, with my
weaknesses,
failures, and
imperfect self in full view.
I come in the Spirit of Christ, relying on Him to
shape my heart,
form my words, and
graciously speak for me.

Father, I come to You in Jesus Christ,
trusting in Him alone.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Our Father Exalted
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

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