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Week 1
“Our Father in Heaven” February 12 – 18
Page 11 Week 3
“Give Us This Day” February 26 – March 4
Page 17 Week 5
“Deliver Us from Evil” March 12 – 18
O N T E N T S
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Week 2
“Thy Kingdom Come” February 19 – 25
Page 14 Week 4
“Forgive Us Our Trespasses” March 5 – 11
Page 20 “The Power and the Glory” March 19 – 25
This Lenten study guide was developed by McFarlin staff as a small group and Sunday school class resource to accompany “The Lord & His Prayer” sermon series, based on N.T. Wright’s book, “The Lord and His Prayer.” Quotations following this symbol are taken from Wright's book. 22
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Week 6
words from our
Pastor
Prayer is both one of the great mysteries and one of the most familiar practices of our faith. We turn to God in times of trouble, seeking help and understanding, the same as we do to give thanks for new joys and blessings. It is an integral part of our worship each week, and it is ever-present when we are out serving in the community and around the world. And yet, we aren’t always sure how prayer works. Sometimes we may find ourselves struggling to pray. We may be fearful that our prayers won’t be answered in the way or time we’d want them answered. Someone may ask us to pray out loud in front of a group or ask us to pray for them, and we just don’t know what words to say. Or perhaps we find ourselves struggling to pray because somewhere deep within our souls we believe in the power of prayer, and we know that it has the potential to create circumstances way outside out of our comfort zones.
I find it reassuring that these questions and struggles aren't just ours today, but that Jesus’ disciples in His day had the same ones. It’s why, after watching Jesus pray, they said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray!” I believe that Jesus didn’t just teach them words to say when he taught them “The Lord’s Prayer”; I believe he was teaching them how to live. By slowing down and paying attention to the words that Jesus taught us to pray, we can begin to not just pray the prayer, but live the prayer. I hope that you and your small group or Sunday school class will be blessed by this sermon series, N.T. Wright’s book and this study guide. Our hope, as a church, is that by reflecting on the words of the Lord’s Prayer over the season of Lent, we will pause and see that the words Jesus gave us to pray will also move us into action. This prayer – these words – will begin to change our lives, and over time, as we change, the world around us will be changed as well. May it be so! Blessings to you on this journey,
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The Lord' s Prayer 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 TRESPASSES, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL. For thine is the Kingdom, THE POWER AND THE GLORY, for ever and ever.
AMEN.
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Our Father in Heaven Week 1: Feb. 12 - 18 From Psalm 8:
"O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth! Your glory is higher than the heavens …. When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers – the moon and the stars you set in place – what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?" (NLT)
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Reflection “Our Father in Heaven.” There is so much depth in just these four words. They ground us here on earth while casting our eyes and our hearts into the cosmos. In these words we discover that we are not alone, that God is real, and not just real, but known. We find our identity as children and are placed within some sort of grand family. It cannot be coincidence that when Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He did so using these words. If Jesus taught His followers not just words to say, but a way to live, then in these words Jesus shows that His way of living begins with an understanding of who we are in relation to God. All else flows from there. N.T. Wright writes: “People used to say that nobody before Jesus had called God ‘Father.’ They also used to say that the word Abba, which Jesus used in the Garden of Gethsemane and quite possibly on other occasions, was the little child’s word, ‘Daddy,’ in the Hebrew or Aramaic of his day. People therefore used to say that Jesus thus introduced, and offered to the world, a new level of personal intimacy with God.” The Creator of all things – the fish and beasts of the land, the stars and sky, morning and night, women and men – is not aloof and distant, but is instead within earshot, so that when we say "Father," Abba, God is near to hear us. When we call out to God, our Father in Heaven, when we pray these words, we step forward and claim our identity as beloved children of God.
Questions
1.
Why do you pray?
2.
Who taught you to pray? Share with your group one of your earliest memories of praying.
3.
In his book, N.T. Wright contends that we pray because “we want to know him [God],” “we want to love him [God],” and “we want to be able to truly call him Father.” There are many people who do not view “Father” in a positive way, as loving, caring.
How might that be a hindrance in praying the Lord’s Prayer? How might we care for and encourage our brothers and sisters for whom this is true? 66
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4.
In Jesus’ day, it was common that sons would follow in their father’s footsteps vocationally. When they reached an appropriate age, they began their apprenticeship, and when the time was right, they would either assume the family business or set out on their own. If we are children of God, what does our apprenticeship look like?
“If we are serious at all about our Christian commitment, we will want to learn and grow in prayer.”
5.
Our Scripture reading in worship this week comes from Psalm 8. It speaks about the majesty of creation – of which we are a part – and describes it as the handiwork of God’s fingers. What are some other things we describe as “majestic"? How do we typically handle and interact with those things? What does that mean, then, for how we interact with one another?
Prayer We give thanks to You, O God, for the care and love with which You’ve made us. We are Your beloved children. Help us to see Your majesty in one another. Give us the courage to step forward into a world of pain and darkness, and to be Your healing light. You are our Father in Heaven. AMEN.
“... as the people of the living creator God, we respond to the call to be his sons and daughters; if we take the risk of calling him Father; then we are called to be the people through whom the pain of the world is held in the healing light of the love of God."”
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Thy Kingdom Come Week 2: Feb. 19 - 25 From Psalm 69:
"... for God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah; and his servants shall live there and possess it; the children of his servants shall inherit it, and those who love his name shall live in it." (NRSV)
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Reflection Have you ever traveled for work, spent an extended time away from home to care for a loved one, or had the opportunity to take a really long vacation? There comes a moment near the end of the trip – no matter how fun, heartbreaking, joyous or exhausting it may have been – when you find yourself just ready to be home where things are familiar and comfortable. “You see, if it was part of Jesus’ task to teach his followers to pray in this way, it is in a sense our task to teach the world to pray in this way.” It is not quite nostalgia, where we long for some part of our current reality to resemble our memories. It’s deeper than that. No matter where we have gone, whether it is just between 9 and 5, or if it’s for a number of weeks, or longer still, there is nowhere else like home. Home is ours. It can be a refuge from all of the busyness in our lives and relief from the pain and suffering, both grand and small, that we experience and encounter in the world. Now imagine never being able to return home. What must that feel like? Where is the hope in that? Unfortunately, this is an all too common reality for many across the globe. Men and women, children and the elderly flee dire economic circumstance, political oppression, ethnic strife, warring ideologies and environmental plunder, abandoning the hope of home for the sake of survival. There surely must be a great longing in their hearts for home. It was no different for the Israelites who, because of their covenant unfaithfulness, spent centuries in exile, away from the Promised Land. Some maintained the hope of home, but most moved on with their lives. Generations of hopelessness came and went until only a few of God’s people remembered God’s promise to bring them home. They prayed and hoped for their deliverance and the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel. But this wasn’t the Kingdom that God had in mind.
“Thy Kingdom Come: to pray this means seeing the world in binocular vision. See it with the love of the creator for his spectacularly beautiful creation; and see it with the deep grief of the creator for the battered and battle-scarred state in which the world now finds itself.”
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Questions 1.
Kings and kingdoms are a bit of a foreign or “Old World” idea for most of us today. What are some of the images, thoughts and emotions that you have when you read and hear these words? How does that impact your understanding of the “kingdom” language that we find in Scripture?
2.
Invite someone in your group to read Zechariah 7:8-14. What was the consequence for Israel ignoring God’s command? What were the things that God asked of them?
3.
Now read Zechariah 8:1-8. What seems to be missing from the hope that God promises them? What does that tell us about the kind of Kingdom that Christ promised and prayed for?
4.
N.T. Wright writes, “Jesus' first followers didn’t think, for a moment, that the Kingdom meant simply some new religious advice – an improved spirituality, a better code of morals, or a freshly crafted theology. They held to a stronger, and more dangerous, claim. They believed that in the unique life, death and resurrection of Jesus the whole cosmos had turned the corner from darkness to light. The Kingdom was indeed here, though it differed radically from what they had imagined.” If the Kingdom is here, why is there still injustice, hunger, guilt, evil?
5.
What, spiritually and practically, might it mean to pray this Kingdom prayer today?
Prayer Lord, my God, we are not in control, and we confess for taking this for granted in our inaction in the face of evil. Open our eyes to see the evil in our midst and the opportunity that we have to confront it with Your love and hope. Help us to be a community of “healed healers,” and turn our prayers into action. Come, Jesus, come. Come, Kingdom, come. AMEN. 1010
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Give Us This Day
Week 3: Feb. 26 - March 4 From Psalm 104:
"These all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things." (NRSV)
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Reflection “We come to prayer, aware of urgent needs, or at least wants,” N.T. Wright comments. “It’s tempting to race through the Lord’s Prayer, as far as ‘on earth as it is in heaven,’ so that we can then take a deep breath and say, ‘Now look here: when it comes to daily bread, there are some things I simply must have.’ And then off we go into a shopping list.” We’ve all found ourselves living out Wright’s words, haven’t we? “Dear God, help me pass this test,” or “God, I really need this promotion,” or “Dear Lord! Are they ever going to call pass interference?” Ok, maybe that one isn’t quite the same. For many of us, these kinds of prayers for provision define our experience with prayer. When a need pops up, we pray. And that isn’t a bad thing! It’s just that there’s so much more that God can – and promises – to do. When God redeemed His people from slavery in Egypt, Moses led them into the wilderness. Not too much time had passed when they approached Moses exhausted and unsure, thirsty and hungry, and begged to go back. They would rather have been slaves with full bellies than be free and reliant on their Savior’s provision. In response, Moses offered one of these pop-up prayers. In Exodus 16 God responds by saying, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day.” It’s interesting for us to note how God chose not to answer their prayer. He didn’t give them everything that they could possibly need for the journey ahead of them. The Israelites could have prayed for release from the journey altogether, but God didn’t provide an answer to prayer in that form either. Instead, God gave them what they needed in that moment, enough for that day. There will be times in our journeys of faith when God will in fact provide us food that we need, a favorable diagnosis to a medical anxiety, or keep the heat on in the winter and the cold air on in the summer. Our guests at the Food Pantry and Utilities Assistance program can attest to that, just as many in our congregation can, as well. Yet there will be other times when it would appear as if God is not providing for our needs. It is then that we are reminded that the provision of God is the bread of heaven, the word made flesh in Christ Jesus. When we find ourselves in need, and even if our physical need goes unmet, we can turn to the words of Christ to find the comfort we need, the promise of the morning to come, and the assurance that we have not been forgotten. “We can bring whatever is on our minds and hearts to God in this action, without fear or shame, be our concerns never so agonizing or never so trivial, trusting that, along with the physical bread, the God we call ‘Father’ will give us all that we need, not least healing, forgiveness, support, and courage, in every other department of our lives.” 1212
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Questions 1.
In reflecting on evangelism, you might hear people say some version of this phrase, “We can’t expect them to hear that Jesus loves them on an empty stomach.”
What does this mean?
How does this section of the Lord’s Prayer speak to how we respond when we hear someone say that?
2.
Jesus was known for eating meals – breaking bread – with the “wrong kind of people” in His day. Whom do you identify as “the wrong kind of people” today?
What would it look like for you to break bread with them?
What message might that send both individually and communally?
3. Ask someone in your group to read Matthew 4:1-4. What does this mean for us today? 4.
Many lament how quickly their prayers go from seeking out God to trying to remember which laundry detergent and boxes of cereal need to be sought out on their next run to the grocery store.
How might we be able to turn our stream of consciousness into a form of prayer? 5. Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 16th century, wrote a communion liturgy which began with this pronouncement: “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid ….” How do you feel about that – no secrets hid?
Prayer
God of Heaven, in Your mercy You provided for Your people when they wandered in the desert, and in Your great love You ensured that there was plenty when the thousands gathered with merely a few loaves and fish. You meet our every need, Jesus, and we are grateful. From all that You have provided us, quicken our hearts to respond to the needs in our midst, that we might provide the same. For in You, God, there is always enough, and in this promise we trust. AMEN. www.mcfarlinumc.org
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Forgive Us Our Trespasses Week 4: March 5 - 11
From Psalm 51:
"Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment." (NRSV)
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Reflection The smells of garlic and oregano, olive oil and red wine, tomatoes and bits of pepper filling the house all afternoon. The sound of crunchy bread as it’s torn to mop up those last heavenly drops once the pasta is gone. Who doesn’t love a good bowl of spaghetti? Plain white shirts, that’s who. Our love and fervor for that spaghetti isn’t just heard by our table-mates mid-chew, it’s also seen in little (or big) red drops on the front of our shirts. This week’s Scripture reading in Psalms about our confession of sin and need for forgiveness is reminiscent of that pasta sauce and the front of our shirts. Blotting is something we do to get the sauce off of our shirt, and sure it removes the goopy bits, but it does very little to remove the stains beneath them. It requires us washing the shirt, maybe giving it a spot treatment to make it appear as if the stains were never there. Even after a few washes, the shirt will look like it's new, but we can still see faint traces of the spills, can’t we? The Psalmist's confession helps us to understand that when we pray for the forgiveness of our sins, we aren’t simply asking God to look over them and give us a free pass. When we pray for forgiveness, we ask the Creator God, our Father, to make our lives as if sin never entered them, to recreate within us new hearts that beat for the things that matter to God’s heart. When we pray for forgiveness, we find that God already has forgiven us, and that we have been called to sow seeds of forgiveness in the world around us. “The church is to be the advance guard of the great act of Forgiveness of Sins that God intends to accomplish for the entire cosmos. Justice and peace, truth and mercy, will one day reign in God’s world; and the church, who could almost be defined as the people who pray the Lord’s Prayer, is to model and pioneer the way of life which is, actually, the only way of life, because it is the way of forgiveness.”
Questions 1.
Why is forgiveness hard for some people? Is it easier to forgive others or to forgive yourself?
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“As we learn what it is like to be forgiven, we begin to discover that it is possible, and indeed joyful, to forgive others.”
2.
Invite someone in your group to read Luke 15:11-32. Discuss the three primary characters in this parable and how they might view and/or experience forgiveness.
3.
Describe a time when you experienced the forgiveness of someone else. How did you feel in that moment? How did you respond?
4.
“Once you replace morality with the philosophy that says, ‘if it feels good, do it,’ there isn’t anything to forgive,” N.T. Wright writes. “... if you still feel hurt by something, our culture suggests that you should simply retreat into your private world and pretend it didn’t happen. In that sort of world, I don’t need God to forgive me, and I don’t need to forgive anybody else, either.” Do you agree with Wright’s suggestion in this passage? If so, what has been the cultural consequence? What does the opposite scenario look like?
5.
If sins were forgiven once and for all when Jesus died on the cross, why is there still sin and evil in the world at all?
Prayer How great is Your mercy, O God! We continue to sin, causing pain and division, even if it is ever so small. Forgive us once again, and place that forgiveness at the forefront of our minds, so that we might be as generous in our forgiveness as You are with Yours. It is a joy to extend Your love and grace. Thank You, Jesus. AMEN. 1616
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Deliver Us From Evil Week 5: March 12 - 18 From Psalm 13:
"Take a good look at me, God, my God; I want to look life in the eye, so no enemy can get the best of me or laugh when I fall on my face. I’ve thrown myself headlong into your arms – I’m celebrating your rescue. I’m singing at the top of my lungs, I’m so full of answered prayers." (MSG)
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“We are called to live and pray at the place where the world is in pain, so that the hopes and fears, the joy and the pain of the whole world may become, by the Spirit and in our own experience, the hope and fear, the joy and pain of God. By giving us this prayer, then, Jesus invites us to walk ahead into the darkness and discover that it, too, belongs to God.”
Reflection We can turn on the television or open up any number of apps on our phones and be confronted with images and stories that remind us of the brokenness in our world. Famine brought on by warfare, refugee crises born from sectarian or ethnic hatred. Children forgotten in systems and cycles of abandonment, abuse and addiction. Animals slaughtered and left to rot for the sake of one body part or another. Families and lives torn apart from terminal illness or the chaos and uncertainty of mental illness. As Will McAvoy, in Aaron Sorkin’s TV show, “Newsroom,” says in the show’s opening monologue, “The first step in solving a problem is recognizing there is one.” We are broken, and the brokenness within us has caused brokenness in the world around us. Naming this brokenness is a challenge. It is easy for us to look into the annuls of history and see jackbooted men marching down promenades, arms extended in salute and to name evil. It’s not difficult for us to spin the globe halfway around to a country whose name has changed countless times in the last century and decry corruption, brutality and even genocide. It is a much harder thing for us to look within ourselves. We’ve become adept at choosing just the right word not only to make our point, but to injure those with whom we disagree. Evil exists. It exists in our world and in each of us. The deliverance we seek in the words Jesus taught us to pray is not just deliverance from those evils that make headlines and textbooks, but it is deliverance within ourselves each and every day. In his book, N.T. Wright notes, “To pray ‘deliver us from evil,’ or ‘ from the evil one,’ is to inhale the victory of the cross, and thereby hold the line for another moment, another hour, another day, against the forces of destruction within ourselves and the world."
“Jesus intends his followers to recognize not only the reality of evil but the reality of his victory over it.”
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Questions 1.
Ask members of your group to share in reading Genesis 3. What is sin, and what were its consequences?
2.
There are many examples in Scripture and in our own lives of our actions causing hurt, disorder and calamity in the lives of others. How are we to understand the naturally occurring events (wildfire, flood, hurricane, etc.) that cause the same things?
3.
Respond to the following:“Both blessings and disasters are in the hands of the Lord.”
4.
N.T. Wright writes: "It is our responsibility, as we pray this prayer, to hold God’s precious and precarious world before our gaze, to sum up its often inarticulate cries for help, for rescue, for deliverance. Deliver us from the horror of war! Deliver us from human folly and the appalling accidents it can produce! Let us not become a society of rich fortresses and cardboard cities! Let us not be engulfed by social violence, or by self-righteous reaction! Save us from arrogance and pride and the awful things they make people do! Save us – from ourselves … and Deliver us from the Evil One. And you can’t pray these prayers from a safe distance."
Do you agree with his assertion? If so, why? If not, describe what it might look like to disregard the safe distance and step toward the needs of the world. 5.
How can you, practically speaking, daily engage in the ministry of deliverance? How can our church?
Prayer Jesus, we confess that we are broken. Sin has taken its toll on our lives and in the world around us. We trust in You and find hope in You. You are our salvation and the solution to the problem of evil that exists in our world. Give us the courage, in particular, for these words to not just be said, but lived. AMEN.
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The Power and the Glory Week 6: March 19 - 25 From Psalm 93:
"The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed; he has put on strength at his belt. Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved. Your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting." (ESV)
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Reflection There isn’t much that is glorious about a newborn child wrapped in cloth, lying in a food trough for animals, and there certainly isn’t much power there either. There is no hint of power in being stripped of your clothes, whipped repeatedly and forced to carry the instrument of your own death up a hillside. And there is no glory in being nailed to a cross where your lungs slowly fill with fluid causing you to drown because you’ve been torturously, yet carefully, hung so as to not be able to support your own weight without experiencing arresting pain. Yet these were the moments that marked the beginning of Jesus’ life and his death. Power and glory. This isn’t the kind of power that we spend our entire lives and careers hoping to attain. It certainly is not the glory we expect for meeting our milestones, exceeding our quotas and achieving beyond our expectations. Everything in our culture is seemingly oriented around the recognition – celebration – of the self. Renown is gained through “likes” and retweets and page views. The ubiquity of self is how our renown is earned, and the more “likes,” retweets and page views we collect determines the extent to which everyone else should “consume” us. What Jesus’ prayer and life show us is that power and glory aren't derived from anything that we do, though we may do it with every ounce of energy we have and every cent we have earned. In fact, what Jesus shows us is that the only power and glory that we truly experience comes in and through Christ’s remaking of this world through the Body, the Church, which is to say, it’s not our power or glory at all. When we pray and live the Lord’s Prayer the way that Jesus intended, we discover that our lives are wholly reoriented away from ourselves and toward God. When we practice “give us this day,” “forgive us our trespasses,” and “deliver us from evil,” the hearts and minds of those on the receiving end will be drawn not to us, but instead to the image of God within us.
“... to pray in Jesus’ name is to invoke the name of the Stronger than the Strong; it is to appeal to the one through whom the creator of the world has become king, has taken the power of the world and has defeated it with the power of the cross, has confronted the glory of the world and has outshone it with the glory of the cross.”
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Questions 1.
N.T. Wright notes that the Lord’s Prayer is really three kinds of prayer, one of: mission and commission, incarnation and empowerment, confidence and commitment. Have your group discuss each of these elements found in the prayer. Does one resonate with you more than another? Why?
2.
How does concluding the Lord’s Prayer with the words “for thine is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever,” orient us toward God?
3.
Ask someone in your group to read Matthew 6:7-15, and ask someone else to read Luke 11:1-4. What’s missing? What does this tell us about the early Church as they first prayed and lived these words?
4.
Wright contends that the more we pray in Jesus’ name - the more we focus on Jesus - the more we will find our prayers changing. What does this mean to you? How have you seen this in your own life?
5.
How can we draw people’s attention to the work of Christ in our lives without drawing attention to ourselves? “God’s glory – Jesus’ glory – is full of grace and truth. The royal babe in the cowshed overturns all that human empire stands for.”
Prayer You are the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, God of Heaven and of Earth. You have redeemed our souls from the pit of emptiness, You have redeemed our souls from death! God, we know that we could not have done this, and that all praise and glory is Yours. As You work in and through us to remake the world in Your image, let it be You that people see and not us. AMEN. 2222
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The Lord' s Prayer
Holy Week: March 26 - April 1 As you enter into Holy Week, devote one day for each line of The Lord’s Prayer. Jesus didn’t just teach us words to pray; he taught us words to live. We are His apprentice children, following in His footsteps so that indeed the Kingdom of God may come. Those steps take us from Galilee to Jerusalem, from Gethsemane to Golgotha, from the cross into the tomb. And it is there, once the stone has been rolled away, that we find one final word that Jesus has taught us to pray and live.
There is no greater AMEN than the one we find come Easter morning. 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 TRESPASSES, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL. For thine is the Kingdom, THE POWER AND THE GLORY, for ever and ever. AMEN. www.mcfarlinumc.org
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