Prayer is of God, from God and for God,

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“Father of ours.” Tacoma, Washington, Feb. 01, 2023.

 

In my mother tongue the Lord’s Prayer starts with GOD as our Father.

“PADRE NUESTRO.” Long before the Gospel arrived in the New World, the Spanish believers prayed the Lord's Prayer starting with the words “PADRE NUESTRO.”

 

The Italians of Roman culture first brought to Spain the Lord’s Prayer as “PATER NOSTER.” God is first, God is second and God is third.

Even to the irreverent mob known as the Mafia, God is the “COSA NOSTRA.”

 

Common sense, which is not that common any more, suggests. 

“SOMETHING IS OURS.” Before being anyone else’s.

The Greek also keep the same sacra order: “PATER HAMON.”

Even dogs fight for a bone and not the other way around.

Fight by fight alone does not produce a bone as a reward. The bone is the reason for the fight.

 

Since I am in the entering into the fighting mood, I’ll pick a friendly Quarrel with Christendom for allowing the Bible to start with the words in the beginning when it should have been “God in the beginning” and it’s not a matter of just order or semantics but when we allowed a little a speck or a scratch behind a mirror, that spot no longer reflects the truth of your face.

My uncle Paul used to have an old mirror without frame year after year to shave himself, and there was a time when we look at that mirror and we have to guess what we look like because it no longer was a faithful mirror that reflects faithfully what was in front of it. 

In the same way we are guessing our way to the Truth instead of looking like Narcissus, his face on a steel pond.

 

The wisdom and the will of God desires that we know him first and foremost as A FATHER, whose first attribute is his absolute and perfect holiness that stands above time and space alone and with no need of anyone?     

God and his sovereignty makes those who pray admit with their own lips, that God is holy “hallowed is your name”.

Thus God settles matters creating an infinite distance by his attribute and at the same time comes as close as he possibly can by declaring himself as OUR FATHER.”

Before we pass like a vulture, ignoring the beautiful flower patches on the ground, let’s acknowledge that if God is our father then We are his children, and that is what we are “CHILDREN OF GOD.”

Man as children of God is directed by the father to seek first, the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Such a kingdom is not an empire in the sky with need of expansion and need to conquer smaller kingdoms on earth.

The kingdom of God is a kingdom because the king lives there, not because there’s a kingdom then God is the sovereign of the kingdom as one in his foolish way might think so.

 

The Lord’s Prayer is the way that a father teaches his child in the way he should go so when he’s old he may never depart from it. Apart from the Lord's Prayer I don’t know any other prayer as comprehensive that covers all of the invisible spiritual kingdom of God.

 

God‘s holy and perfect desire is that his children long for his will to be done and that should be our preference also as it is done in heaven, that is the  perception of the believer, that in God all things must be perfect. Must be beautiful, must be convenient to both parties, and always.

 

In the Quechua Inca language, the believers praise: “APUYAYA, HANAQ PACHA KAI PACHA UNANCHAQ TAYTALLAYCU, MUNASQAYKI YA CACHUN.” This means, “Creator of heaven and earth may only be what you desire unfold before us and nothing else.”

 

The next sentence in the Lord’s Prayer is. “Give us this day our daily bread”.   It seems to be an abrupt falling all the way to the ground from heaven to the Brown hills of the Lancaster County Pennsylvania cornfields.  

 Eating the fruit of the land seems so materialistic. It isn’t. In this prayer the Lord’s Prayer actually states the most wonderful fact that the brown dirt should contribute to keep life, the spiritual life or life itself, which is spiritual through metabolism, which is the miracle of miracles if you ask me.

 

And the following sentences are like a man coming back to his senses, and asking the most important thing, and that is, forgive our trespasses, but first by acknowledging that we are trespassers. There is no discussion about the reality of our sins and the need for forgiveness and the beauty of the whole thing is God put us in a situation that he’s not going to forgive us, unless we forgive others, for we have freely received that which we should freely give. Nothing as forgiveness makes a person feel free.

 

When a man asks God not to lead into temptation, but deliver us from Evil, he acknowledges that the initiative to be tempted comes from a Sovereign God even though he is not the tempter.

 

God sovereignly allows us to be tempted for his own greater purpose, including sickness and hardship, and through all these things He pushes us to embrace a savior. God provided in Jesus our Lord such a savior. And the reason we pray this prayer is because the kingdom of God belongs to God who alone has the power to save, therefore alone is to be honored and glorified forever and ever.

 

We the followers of Jesus solemnly seal our faith when we say a sounding amen or I agree, so be it, yes, it’s finished it’s consummated. It has been paid in full. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.

 

Gerry Gutierrez.

 

PS. The pictures were taken this week at Lois's visit.