Second Word: Prayer

To understand and live the life of the Kingdom of God requires a radical openness to thinking in entirely new ways. Openness: that was the first word we looked at last week. Today we consider a second word: prayer. Everybody who is religious, and many who are not, seem to pray. But we are talking here about rarely found kingdom-seeking prayer.

It all starts as we are confronted by this man Jesus. We hear him proclaiming the good news of the kingdom. We are open to his radical idea of living life on earth according to the principles of heaven. Then several things may happen to us.

We see that we will be strangers in this world and we may feel afraid. We may feel this is way above our pay grade. We may wonder how his teaching can work or just how to put some of it into practice. For a normal human being to contemplate living life by the age to come, not in heaven, but right here and right now, is something akin to an ant contemplating how he will get dressed up, drive a car to work and do a PowerPoint presentation. It is overwhelming. Seems impossible.

And then maybe we understand why Jesus said so much about prayer. “Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find” or “Pray like this, ‘our Father who is in heaven.’”

For Jesus himself, who was the very embodiment of the kingdom, prayer was not so much something he did; it was the air he breathed. We can find and live kingdom life, but never without prayer.

Focus Scriptures

Matthew 6: 9-13

9"This, then, is how you should pray:

" 'Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

10your kingdom come,

your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

11Give us today our daily bread.

12Forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

13And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.'

Matthew 7:7-12

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

9"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.