THOUGHTS

a revised repost from 2014

Prayers.  When our oldest son was little, his first prayer was, "Eat.  Amen."  As we continued to try to teach him how to pray, he questioned us aghast at, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."  He couldn't believe that this was in the Bible, that someone would not want God as their shepherd.  Later we gave up on trying to get him to close those big eyes of his in prayer, which meant I was the one peeking to make sure he had his eyes closed.  Nope, not goin' ta happen, and I never found anywhere in the Bible that said he had to pray with his eyes closed.  Yet his prayers as a child were often beautiful like, "Here are two pennies and my heart for you, God."    

Lately I've been meditating on the Lord's Prayer which I pray every night after lifting up my loved ones and our country up in prayer.  It seems that I need the comfort of knowing it is His kingdom, and power and glory forever, not to mention the "deliver us from evil," plea.  But I find myself pondering that Jesus taught us to pray, "Our Father," not "My Father," not even, "Father."  We are part of a body of believers.  Jesus could have been a little possessive of His Father, but He wasn't.  He included us by teaching His disciples how to pray knowing the costly price tag of what was coming to make the "Our" possible.

The "Our" of the body of Christ through the centuries has also paid of price.  They were dragged from their homes by Saul before he became Paul, imprisoned, tortured, torn apart by lions for entertainment, used as human torches for Nero's pleasure, burned at the stake, beheaded, shackled, dispersed without homelands or livelihoods, rejected, hated, rounded up like cattle with an attempt to annihilate them, driven underground to have secret churches,  all the while we have our comfortable churches with a freedom we take for granted.  The Bill of Rights gave us this freedom to worship, something we forget was bought by shed blood of Revolutionary soldiers.  

 

As I've studied Ancestry.com, I have found kinfolk who were burned at the stake for being Protestants, who were imprisoned in the Tower of London for it, who were rounded up like cattle like the Protestant Huguenots, who fled for their lives in France to America to escape as well as others from England and Ireland who fled because of their forbidden form of worship, and many who fought and died for that freedom in the Revolutionary War.

My "Our" consists of godly people into whose church family I was born: Dundee Hills Church of the Nazarene, my father's church plant during seminary in Kansas City; his church in Lawrence, Kansas; Bresee Avenue Church of the Nazarene in Pasadena, California; a church plant that became El Morro Church of the Nazarene in Morro Bay/Los Osos, California; our college church, Linda Vista in San Diego, California; in Kansas, Overland Park Church of the Nazarene in seminary; Weaverville, California, our first church; Yreka, California; Roseburg, California, our large church experience; Hallwood church here in our area; then our church plant, New Beginnings Wesleyan here in Marysville, California.

I will skip the ungodly wolves in sheep's clothing who sometimes seemed more plentiful than the empty choir robes hanging in the music closet.  Rather, the "Our" in our lives has been filled with the sweetness of the soul of those who answered the call of holiness unto the Lord and who have crucified carnality and lived a life of harmony in the Spirit.  This is the beatific life of those who instill the life of the Beatitudes.  There are no finer creatures upon the face of the earth, fellowship even beyond the bonds of membership, denomination, even of time or country, nation or race.  The "Our Father" is a gift Jesus left us with as His disciples went from the 120 in the Upper Room to multiplied millions.  

So what keeps us from the "Our" hour of the Sabbath?  We must have a lot of oxen to get out of the ditch.  However now it is easier than ever as we watch services online in the comfort our homes.  They have multiplied like the loaves and fishes Jesus broke to feed the multitude and are more far reaching than we could have imagined.  Franklin Graham's new post even said how a distressed police officer desperately asked Serie how he could find God and was referred to the Billy Graham ministries.  Now he too is included in the "Our."  Are you included in the "Our"?  If not, you can believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.  Welcome to the fellowship of believers.