02/11/2025
The Shepherd, the King, and the Rescuer
God has got a long list of names, but some of those names are better than others. There is a small child who thought God’s name was Harold since the Lord’s Prayer includes the phrase “Hallowed be thy name.” When you think of all the scriptures that are most likely to be memorized you would have to include Psalm 23, The Lord’s Prayer, and John 3:16. The danger for us is our tendency to focus on the wrong thing.
We are likely to fall in love with the poetry of the 23rd Psalm and ignore the shepherd that poetry describes.
We focus on the King James English which we use in our version of the Lord’s Prayer and forget the King of Kings whose Kingdom is coming soon.
We focus on being rescued from ‘perishing’ and overlook the one who has gone to such great lengths to rescue us.
If the 6th chapter of Matthew’s gospel teaches us anything, it teaches us that our God loves us with the intimacy and unconditional love of a Father or Mother; that God is not yet done with setting this world in order because God’s kingdom is not yet present here as it is there in heaven; God provides for his children; God gives us what we need to resist temptation and avoid evil; and that God is God and we are lucky enough to reflect his glory in all that we do and say.
The Lord’s Prayer is meant to be prayed, of course. But it is also meant to be a statement of faith in who God is and what God wants for God’s children. Find a copy of Matthew 6:5-15 that is simple and plain and make it a part of your daily quiet time. With each line say, “This, O Lord, I believe.” And when you are done, “and this, O Lord, is how I plan to live out my life.”
Archived Posts
Change of Focus This Week
Instead of sharing with you about yesterday’s sermon I’d like to invite you to do some background reading for next Sunday’s “Only Murders in the Bible.” Seeing that it is All Saints Day this Sunday, we are going to look at the very first Christian martyr, Stephen.
You Might Be Thinking It’s All About You If…
In working on Sunday’s sermon I asked my computer’s AI if she/he could come up with a few suggestions in answer to the above: "You Might be thinking it’s all about you, if…."
Prayer Changes Things
Here is a transcript of the prayer I prayed at the end of yesterday’s sermon.
Optimism, Faith, and Hope:
Practical Steps For Increasing All Three
Here are some practical, spiritual, and relational ways to grow faith, hope and optimism:
Listening Heart
It’s kind of crazy when you think about it. Wisdom in the Bible is all about listening. Of course it makes sense that wisdom would start with listening to God, to God’s law and commandments, as well as the promptings and leadings of the Holy Spirit.
Here are some quotes that
didn’t make it into Sunday’s sermon.
(But it doesn’t mean that they don’t offer real insight into the power of risk over the fear of failure...)
Such A Rich Passage (Luke 19:1-10)
I reflected a lot on the passage about Zacchaeus because it has been written off as “been there, read that, little guy in a tree.” But it is so rich in getting to the heart of what it means to be saved by grace through faith—to live our lives out of gratitude rather than obligation.