Hi, music class! Question: I, Tim, am planning a music class over the summer, 1 night a week, starting after June 20th. Anyone interested? If you are, tell your parents, and when I call them to schedule our rehearsal, I will tell them about it and they will know you want to do it!

Before you play drums to this, take a minute and listen to the words, repeat after it, out loud or in your mind, and pray it to God.

This is our adaptation of the Lord's Prayer, found in the book of Matthew, Chapter 6, verses 9-13. First of all, why pray this prayer? Over a billion people on this planet pray it daily, but why? Sure, Jesus taught this same prayer to his disciples when they asked him, "Lord, teach us to pray", and I believe Jesus to be the son of God, who is creator of the whole cosmos, that which we see and that which we don't see. That makes it pretty important. But what does it do to us? For us? For the world?

1. It starts with us being aware that God is with us and hears us at all times. (Jesus called God Father, or, more accurately translated, "Abba", which means "Daddy" in Aramaic) When we are aware of God, we can talk to God and trust we are heard, listen and trust we will hear from God, and recognize when God is at work. The ways God works are often different from the way we are used to life working, so by not being aware, we can miss out on being a part of what this Daddy in Heaven is doing all around us, and then we miss being a part of it!

2. Then it tells us our purpose: "Hallowed be your name"- that means we, by our words, actions, songs, and the love God gives us to share with the world, make God's name something other people are excited about, in awe of, and want to know more!

3. Then it tells us God's plan for the world- "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven." If it wasn't for this, we could look around us and see all the people on drugs, families splitting apart, damage to the earth, abuse of animals, the list goes on, and think that this world was meaningless and headed absolutely nowhere. This line tells us God's plans for the world are good! Why doesn't he do it NOW?! One of Jesus's disciples, a man named Peter, heard someone ask this question and answered: "The Lord isn't slow to do what he promised, as some people think. Rather, he is patient for your sake. He doesn't want to destroy anyone but wants all people to have an opportunity to turn to him and change the way they think and act." (2nd Peter chapter 3 verse 9) Could you imagine if someone pulled you out of your class and said, "All right, today at 2 pm you will take your college entrance exams and all the Regents for 12th grade. If you fail, you'll be kicked out of school forever." WHAT??!!! Don't you want time to learn those things before you have to be tested on them? Jesus has several stories that address this, but my favorite is when he says God's kingdom is like a little bit of yeast that gets put in some bread dough, and then after awhile, the whole ball of dough is yeasted, risen, and ready to cook! That's the same plan for you and me, and the whole world. (Hint: IT'S A PROCESS!) Eventually, everything that isn't rooted in God is rooted out of the world, cut off and thrown away. Don't we all want time to sink more roots into God before he comes and makes everything new?

4. Then it tells us we can ask God for what we need for each day, which allows us to trust instead of worrying all the time.

5. It reminds us to forgive others of what they do to us (or fail to do for us), because we ourselves fail, and don't we want God (and others) to forgive us?

6. Then it tells us we will come against hard things, things we will need God to help us through. Whether we feel like making the wrong choice (temptation) or something hard happens in our life circumstance (trial), or even something downright evil, we need God's help and can ask for it.
And Jesus would NEVER tell us to pray for something God wasn't willing to answer. So often we start our prayers asking God to help us with this and that, which is okay, but if we pray the Lord's prayer, we know Who it is we're praying to, we find what Jesus (God's Son!) believed was worth praying about, and we know what God most likes to help us with!
There, have fun.

If you want to hear more about the Lord's Prayer from other voices than mine, click on this link, click "launch sermon player" and look for the sermons that bear the subtitle, "The Lord's Prayer". They are from a church in Kentucky that is very inspiring to me, and most of the sermons come through Adam Russell, a pastor I met last year. I make it a point to listen to their sermons every week, because God speaks through them! There are four Lord's Prayer sermons, and they are all good.
www.vineyardcampbellsville.org#/audio-archive/audio-archive