Our Father

According to a former Archbishop of Canterbury if he was asked to give a summary of the Christian faith on the back of an envelope "the best thing to do would be write the Lord's Prayer." We find the words of the prayer in the middle of a sermon Jesus preached and through which people were amazed at his authority. And like the sermon, this prayer is truly amazing. It's about living our whole life in the sight of God our heavenly Father which is a radical way to live. Every part of the Lord's Prayer is radical because every single bit of it challenges our assumptions about who we are and who God is and what the world is like. And what we are asking for in praying this prayer is for the most revolutionary change we can imagine in the world to occur.

I'm encouraged by the fact that the disciples came to Jesus and asked him to teach them to pray. Because although prayer is the most natural thing a Christian can do it's also one of the most difficult. We need all the instruction and encouragement we can get to help us in prayer. And where better to get it than from the lips of Jesus himself who tells us that the first and most important aspect of prayer is that it's all about coming to our Father. Over the Sunday evenings of the Autumn term we've been learning from Jesus how to grow in our relationship with God our Father as we unpacked the contents of this amazing prayer.

Phil Jenkins

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