Showing posts with label Studying the Lord's Prayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Studying the Lord's Prayer. Show all posts

Saturday, December 25, 2010

My final post for this blog

My dear friends and readers,

I started blogging the inspiration I'd been gaining from studying and praying the Lord's Prayer - and the spiritual sense of it as understood by Mary Baker Eddy - over 3 years ago. It has been an amazing voyage of discovery and inspiration.

But it is time for me to stop blogging and focus more on living the truth of the Lord's Prayer. Not that I haven't already been doing that as best I can. But it feels natural for me to stop now and talk less and live more.

My study has been so wonderfully life-changing for me! I have learned so much about Jesus' prayer and it's power. And even though I've been praying this prayer all my life, these last 3 and a half years have been so revelatory! There is just SO MUCH in the Lord's Prayer to listen to and practice. Just 62 words, but such powerful words! Mrs. Eddy stated that, understood in its true spiritual sense, the Lord's Prayer can heal anything.

It has been a complete joy for me to companion with this prayer and share the inspirations I've gained from studying it and praying it with you all. I have tried to be as clear and sincere in doing that as I possibly can.

So I hope you also have enjoyed the journey. And may the Lord's Prayer continue to help you, and heal you, and bring you closer to God.

With great gratitude,

- Mark

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Connections

If we hallow - honor, adore - God's Name, if we truly understand His nature to be completely good, we begin to awake to and accept our role as His reflection. We experience oneness with Him, communion with Him. His Name of Grace becomes our daily Bread of Life.

Then we begin to yearn for His sovereignty, His presence, to be with us, to be within us. We yearn to be with Him, to live within His kingdom, under His authority, all the time. We glimpse our likeness to Him. We yearn to reflect His unconditional Love in us as love for His creation, as love for one another. This yearning leads to doing, to forgiving all our debtors as His love forgives ours.

Then we begin to live His Love more consciously. We see the impact it has. We feel His power being made manifest in us, as us. This awakens discernment: we taste honey and understand what's good. Then we can more easily shun the bad. Learning these lessons, how then can we be led into temptation? Knowing His Love - and living it - we are delivered from all evil, from sin, disease, and even death.

How? because He really is our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious. And His is the presence (the Kingdom), and the Christly omnipotence (the Power), and the perfect Love (the Glory), forever.

Amen.

Friday, March 6, 2009

The joy of the Lord's Prayer

We are so glad that You are our Father which art in heaven.
We are so glad that you are our Father-Mother God, Good, already all-harmonious!

We are so happy to hallow Your name, to recognize Your complete and perfect loving nature as the Adorable One.

We so much want Your kingdom within us to come alive!
We are so amazingly glad that Your kingdom - Your presence - really is already come; that in fact, You are already here, with us, right now. And it is a great place to be!

We so so so much yearn to see Your will done in earth as it is already done in Heaven.
We are so glad that You enable us to know that, as in Heaven, so in earth - right where we are - You are already omnipotent, supreme.

And we are so hungry for our daily communion with You, the Bread of Life that you give us!
We are so grateful for the grace You give us today, for the famished affections You feed - and cause us to feed as Your reflection.

And thank You for forgiving us our debts - as we forgive our debtors.
How grateful we are that Your forgiving Love is reflected in our loving to forgive.

Oh and yes! Lead us! and You never lead us into temptation or firery trials. So we thank You for always delivering us from evil - from sin, disease, death - from every claim of that original lie that we, Your reflection, could ever be separated from You.

And how is all this possible?

Because You are the only Presence, and the only Power, and the only Glory there ever is, forever. Because You are already infinite, all the power there is right here, all Life, Truth, Love there is right now. You are over all. In fact, Father-Mother, You are All.

Hallelujah!

Sunday, March 30, 2008

The Lord's Prayer & The 10 Promises (Part 2)

You looked at how the first 5 Commandments - or Promises - are affirmed in the first 4 verses of the Lord's Prayer. Look now at how the last 5 Commandments are affirmed in the next 3 verses of the Lord's Prayer. Think about them together. See how Jesus' prayer awakens you to their promise for you.

6. Thou shalt not kill.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness...
10. Thou shalt not covet...

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.
"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.
"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
And God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death.

In the next several posts, let's dive into this together.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Thy will be done & desire (part 2)

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

"Thoughts unspoken are not unknown to the divine Mind. Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds."

Desire itself is a form of prayer. Desire as in that yearning, that longing, that wishfulness, that watchfulness for something better, higher, holier, that dissatisfaction with the status quo, that unwillingness to sit still and stay silent. Where do you suppose that stirring comes from? What makes you want something more real and solid? What impells you to move? What awakens you to push the boundaries, to go above and beyond the life you already know, the hunger already fed, the love you already feel?

It can only come from one place, whether you understand it clearly or not: "The intercommunication is always from God to His idea, man."

But the Bible warns you: "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God:"

Why would you want to "try (test) the spirit" of your desire? For the same reason you'd want to avoid accepting a counterfeit $100 bill - to avoid being suckered into accepting nothing as something. Would you really want to accept a counterfiet $100 bill? Would you want to go through the hassle of dealing with the reprecussions of that? or of wasting the time straightening out that kind of situation? Could you afford losing something like a real $100 for a fake $100?

No.

So how do you "try (test) the spirit" of your desire to make sure it's not a fake?

Firstly, be honest about it. Mrs. Eddy makes this astute observation: "Honesty is spiritual power. Dishonesty is human weakness." You can lie to others, but don't kid yourself that you can lie to God. You cannot. Be honest with God about your desires. He loves you and His will for you is only good. Trust Him to open your deepest desires in a way that will be perfect for you - and a true reflection of Him.

Secondly, there are at least few ways - and probably many more - that you can "try" your desires to see if they are authentic to your true nature, such as:

1. is the desire persistent?
2. is the desire a little scarey? does it push your comfort zone?
3. does it feel somehow intuitively authentic and real - even if it seems unattainable?
4. does it make you want to grow in new ways?
5. does it make you want to give? and does it also make you want to receive?
6. does it impell you to exercise your talents - the things you love doing, that express your natural abilities and strengths?
7. does it nag at you to learn and live your real life-purpose?

Such desire is the Holy Spirit stirring you, awakening you, driving you forward to fulfill His will "in earth as it is in heaven." God is never content to leave you sleeping and dreaming away your existence. The Holy Spirit insists on movement. It insists on breathing deeply the fresh air of inspiration and growth. The wind blows, the Spirit moves, and things begin to change. Desire is the awakening in your heart of Emmanuel - God-with-us.

Sometimes your desire is clouded over with the debris of your old ways of thinking and old ways of seeing yourself and others. But even so, even if you're not sure if the desire is real or fake, you can still reach down deep and sincerely hand it over to God.

Sometimes you may need to hand it over repeatedly and persistently. Sometimes you can just offer it up in prayer once and you'll feel OK about it. But either way, you can always trust your desires to God.

You will likely find your passing fancies lose their luster. The counterfeit $100 gets exposed for the worthless thing it is. This is a good - even if sometimes painful - sign.

You might also find that your genuine desires start to blossom in unexpected ways. Opportunities will be put in front of you repeatedly that exercise your newly answered prayers. As your thought opens up about your desires, you take a step and then another, and another, and another, and the doubts begin to fade and you begin to realize you have the ability to live your desires - that your prayers are being answered by your living them.

Trusting God to help you, you will find the courage to keep taking those steps. And a new world will open up, and you will find your life more loving and yourself more loved, and your work more blessed and more of a blessing to others. Your life will be glorifying God - making Him and His perfect will, manifest.

So test this out. Be honest about your desires. Treat them as the prayer that they are. Offer them to God. Let the fakes fall away (good riddance) and treasure the true. And you can be sure that God will mold you and exalt you, and answer your desires, your prayers, in a way that fulfills His heavenly will for you, right where you are right now, in ways more wonderful than you ever thought possible or even expected.

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Thy will be done & Jesus (part 1)

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."

What better way to "let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus" than to pray Jesus' own prayer?

Isn't the Lord's Prayer the most beautiful intimate insight we have into Jesus' healing Christly consciousness? It is his practice made plain. It shows us how he prayed - and how he healed. It shows us how he communed with his Father, how Jesus lived His heavenly will right where the earthly dream seems to be.

And it shows you how he expects you to do he same - to have that same conciousness of God that he had, to have that Mind that he had, and to go and do likewise: be God's child, His expression, His Being made manifest, His Love made felt, His wholeness and holiness and healing made real - His heavenly will being done right where you are - in you, through you, as you - no matter what your earthly circumstances, always causing you to be blessed and to be a blessing to everyone around you.

How?

Praying the Lord's Prayer understandingly enables you to know that, as in heaven, so right here in earth, God - and God's perfect will - really are omnipotent, supreme.

Remember how Jesus saw God's perfect heavenly will in action:

"Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."

The Mind that was in Christ Jesus sees only God's perfect will for His creation. Jesus' correct view grew out of that consciousness. And it not only healed the sick, it reformed the sinner, redeemed the self-willful, cleansed the lepers, raised the dead, fed the 5000, and gave us the Lord's Prayer.

Do you think Jesus would have seen you any differently?

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Dr. Bob's gift

I'd like to share something my good friend Dr. Bob wrote. He's also studying the Lord's Prayer and he said it would be OK for me to share what he sent me. I know you'll find it as inspiring as I did. Here it is, complete:

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December 30, 2007

As the year 2007 closes, and my thoughts of accomplishments and challenges are reviewed, I set forth a particularly prevalent approach to healings in my experience during the year. Reading Mary Baker Eddy’s “…spiritual sense of the Lord’s Prayer”, found on pages 16-17 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, elevated my understanding of Jesus’ teaching. I contemplated each line, stayed with it until I gained a higher sense of how to apply a deeper meaning of the Prayer to overcome mortal mind’s attempted intrusion into the sunshine of peaceful experiences.

The following is typical of my desire to use the strength and certainty of God’s infinite power to deliver me closer to man’s true nature as His cherished child:

(“Our Father…”) Father, I know that you love me, and you know that I love you. I understand that you are Principal, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, Love, substance, and intelligence. I understand that each of these synonyms has endless attributes which apply effectively to any need I have.

(“…which art in heaven,…”) I realize that heaven is where you dwell, and that dwelling place is everywhere, and that I am there also, because within it you created me. It is a peaceful atmosphere, harmonious, and mighty, with no threat of weakness, confusion, uncertainty, hostility, anger, or dismay..

(“Hallowed be Thy name.”) Father, you are what you are, the supreme reason for Life, and I adore and honor you. It is awesome to recognize your power and your governance of the universe.

(“Thy kingdom come.”) Since you are all, everywhere, and all powerful, there is no waiting for your kingdom to come. I am already within it. In it is where you want me to be; with you, right now.

(“Thy will be done in earth…”) Spiritually earth is an eternal place where there is no fear, only joyous avenues, boulevards, mountains, and trails to travel and explore that have no ending.


(“…as it is in heaven.”) I don’t have to wish or hope for your will to be done, because I know and understand that your work is finished. Your will is done. It is my spiritual consciousness.

(“Give us this day our daily bread;”) I am supplied every moment of every day with an abundance of perfect ideas guiding and guarding every promising step in my journey.

(“And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”) Sometimes I seem to make mistakes when upset or confused, but I don’t want to act intentionally to hurt or harm another, or myself. I trust that I am able to express your love and as I am forgiven and corrected others will do the same. Harmony among your children is normal. Sometimes animal magnetism tries to block my perfect reflection, but vanishes as my thoughts turn to spiritual ideals.

(“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”) I have real comfort in knowing what you will not do and what you will do. Pleading or begging is not what you want from me. I realize that I must make the decision to turn away from temptation and allow your floodtides of good to deliver me from evil. I know that you will show me how to turn away from sin, disease, and death.

(“For thine is the kingdom,…”) Your heavenly kingdom surrounds me and gives me courage.

(“… and the power,…”) I have the inner strength of conviction to demonstrate the fallacy of mortality, and to the reject the illusion of any other power but thine.

(“…and the glory, forever.”) Through your glorious grace, protection, and unconditional love, I AM HEALED.

Thank you Jesus for the Lord’s Prayer.
Thank you Mary Baker Eddy for the spiritual sense of the Lord’s Prayer.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Introduction

On May 24, 2007 I promised myself that I would set aside specific time every day to study and pray the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9 - 13) And because I am a Christian Scientist it has been natural for me to include Mary Baker Eddy's spiritual understanding of the Lord's Prayer in my study. This blog is the fruit of my daily communion with Lord's Prayer. I hope it brings you some new insights and blessings also. Sincerely, - Mark