Why God?

Who will always feed you?
Who will always forgive you?
Who will always lead you away from danger?
Who will always deliver you from evil?

Only someone who truly loves you.

If you knew someone like that, and you were afraid, or needed something urgently, or just wanted to sit quietly with someone, wouldn't you want to go to them? Wouldn't you look forward to spending time with them? Wouldn't you love just being with them?

But how often do you listen to everyone except God! How often do you let the media tell you who you are or aren't. Or how often you believe what other people tell you about yourself. Or maybe you let the past - or your fear of the future - define you!

So try something different. Try listening to what God, Love, is saying about you. Listen to the Lord's Prayer.

Jesus shows us through the Lord's Prayer why you should listen to Someone who truly and completely loves you, why you should listen to God:

* God cares for you deeply and individually. Your Father-Mother God knows you by name.

* His nature is completely Good. God's relationship with you is priceless, sacred, enduring, adorable.

* God's unconditional love is present with you here and now.

* Every wonderfully perfect and inspiring and challenging and fun - heavenly - condition is God's only will for you.

* God knows your need before you ask Him. He supplies your daily needs, in both practical and spiritual ways. And your only need really is for Grace for today, feeding all famished affections.

* The Love you feel from God awakens your love for others. You discover forgiveness as a power that breaks the dreams of lack and doubt and enemies.

* And that Love leads you away from away from the trials of a personal ego and its junk food tempations. Because divine Love gives you a different perspective. Love shows you that you deserve something much better. Love delivers you into discovering your wholeness, your healthiness, your holiness as His likeness.

And how does God, Love do this?

Because God is already present with you. God is always the only real power there is. And God, Love, already includes you as His completely satisfied image and likeness. Right here where you are already. Right now.

So look outward and upward!

Look at all you have to give.
Look at all you have to live.
Give your gifts of love without fear or hesitation.
God has given them to you for a reason.

And the reason is this:

You are His gift, His blessing, to the world.

Why the Lord's Prayer heals

"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.

Everything that has gone before, every profound statement of Truth, every verse, every word of the Lord's Prayer is powered by this final declaration.

God's name and nature are hallowed, God's presence is confirmed, God's will is declared by this verse. The reason God feeds us, forgives us, leads and delivers us is explained by this verse. This is a clear statement of God's complete dominion over you and the universe. It is laid down as the law governing you and every situation you - or anyone or anything - will ever encounter. This verse is the reason the Lord's Prayer meets every human need. This is the reason the Lord's Prayer heals.

Over the course of many months I have changed from just saying the Lord's Prayer to really praying the Lord's Prayer. I have come to understand that the Lord's Prayer fulfills the 10 Commandments - the 10 Promises - that outline exactly who we are as God's image and likeness. I love discovering the symmetry of how verses 2 - 4 are the reasons verses 5 - 7 are possible. I love how the Lord's Prayer is all about our real relationship with God, about how this prayer creates an openness - a hospitality - to our Father-Mother, to accept Him, adore Him, recognize His presence and His power superceding every thought of "something else", of separation.

So I especially love how the Lord's Prayer affirms our unity with God - as our Father, as our Mother. And only as we understand that can we even know Who we are praying to, who we are trusting our desires to! And then (and only then) can we actually ask for what we need and be confident in getting a healing answer.

And what does Jesus show us we need? Our daily bread - our daily communion, our daily experience - of God, the Adorable One. An experience of His grace feeding all the hungerings we have. His awakening Love forgiving us, reflected in our love of forgiving ourselves and others. His sure leading - never into evil - but always delivering us from sin, disease, death - from any sense of separation from Him.

And how is all this possible?

"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever."
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.

That's why. That's the law overturning every counterclaim of us being separated from God. That is what changes our perception of what is real and true. That is what subordinates what we humanly think is true and real for what God actually declares is true and real.

He owns it all! His is the kingdom. His is the power. And His is the glory.

And what's more: our rightful place is in His kingdom, His presence. Our confidence is in His almighty all-Loving power. And when our heart and soul and mind are at home with Him, we cannot experience anything less than His glory.

This is why the Lord's Prayer meets all human needs.

And this is why the Lord's Prayer heals.

Give us this day our daily joy

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.

Give us irrational joy for today; tickle our spiritual funny-bone.