Earthquakes and Their Tremors

[HKHaugan]

Earthquakes and Their Tremors

One of the great tremors still causing us to feel the earthquakes arising from the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, is prayer. Everything personal between God and man before those earthquakes was a matter for liturgical correctness handled by the professional religionists, pagan sacrifices and personal superstitions like astrology, carrying amulets and relying on fake beliefs like luck, fate and karma. But now, through Jesus, His Cross and Resurrection, everyone has direct access to God in prayer. Since individual uniqueness was the nature of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, it was also their unity, their Oneness, that made prayer the locale for a direct interchange between any individual and God.

Jesus revealed that God made us to be like Him and really wants us to be like Him. His nature is faithful, just, kind, graceful, truthful and all the values He lived. In Jesus He made all of His nature totally accessible through the Holy Spirit. God is that personal with everyone. Because it reveals a perfect relationship of three faithful persons, we get to share in that experience through faith. Our mind, heart and spirit are the image of those three; the Father’s mind, the Son’s heart and the Spirit’s motivation. Therefore, we find our personal balance in Him with Scripture opening belief for the mind, trust for the heart and faith for the spirit. This is the context for every relationship we have on earth. Their balance depends on Him in their midst; personal, truthful, open and honest.

Faith is the gift that carries us into His presence. “Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb.11:6).” That means He wants us to talk to Him, share with Him, be emotional with Him, reason with Him. He in us and we in Him (Jn.17:25). Love Him, trust Him, serve Him. That’s what prayer is all about.

It must have rattled the disciples when they saw Jesus praying and wondering why He was not in the Temple or seeking the elders to talk about God and to get them to pray special prayers for Him. So one day when they saw Him praying, they asked Him to teach them how to pray (Lk.11:1). He then gives them a teaching, plain, simple and to the point. “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation (Luke 11:2-4).”

As an aside here it might be well to note that there is a difference between the way Matthew and Luke give us the Lord’s Prayer. It could very well be that they are taught in two different places while Jesus was on the way through Galilee. Certainly Matthew’s was on the side of a mount. Luke’s was just ‘in a certain place.’ Different contexts, times and places but the same basic themes. We’ll start with Luke and then look at Matthew.

Consistent with Luke, who was spiritually pragmatic and concerned with reflecting the humanity of the divine Jesus, it was simple and, as we said, to the point. It contains the essential principles that open personal prayer.

First, the consciousness of God as Father, His Holy name and His Kingdom. Be ‘Father-conscious’ because Jesus was ‘Father-conscious.’

Second, our daily dependence on His presence and provision. The Father’s Word was His food (Mt.4:4) and now our food.

Third, being conscious of our tendency to sin, our need for forgiveness and then extending that forgiveness to others (Eph.4:32).

Fourth, the closing principle is facing the Tempter with God the Father in mind (James 4:7). Break this last one down carefully. Think of Eve’s Tempter personally presenting her with what is “good for food, pleasing to the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom (Gen.3:6).” What is good for body food, mind food, emotional food and spiritual food is up to you apart from God?

Keep in mind this is a teaching on prayer.

The Father knows our real needs. He’s teaching us He is quite aware of our real needs. He knows what we are really like inside. Therefore, this teaching is a set of principles that open the door to being honest with Him, He with us, and then guiding us with His Spirit to meet them. The clincher to this understanding comes when we see how He immediately follows this teaching on prayer with several penetrating insights about the attitude of the sinful heart and its need for healing. He’s getting down in the dirt, the hidden attitudes that toxify our behavior.

“Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread because a friend of mind on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.’

Then the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me, the door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of his boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Notice where Jesus starts with the response of ‘the one inside.’ It’s not only about being inside a house. It’s about being inside one’s self. This insight is about attitude and, no question, this guy who resisted getting up was a guy with an attitude inside. ‘Don’t bother me. I’m in my comfortable world and you are intruding.’ It’s like our driving attitude which can be summed up in one simple statement, ‘You’re in my way.’ How much is ‘inconvenience’ our real excuse or what we feel? Why is it there?

It’s like anything I can’t control. I develop a defensive or self protecting attitude and reason not to deal with it. It’s the attitude we construct to deal with the unexpected events that are always making their demands on us. These are the real subjects of prayer and when these become our strongholds we hide in when the unexpected happens, watch out. It’s time to pray.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He goes on to ask about what the inside in each of us is really like. “Which of you fathers, if you son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will you Father in Heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”

Yikes! He nailed all of us there. Watch what He does. He is calling us ‘fathers’ and getting us to compare ourselves with His Father, the ultimate, intimate and consummate Father, “Our Father” in every unexpected thing unexpected.

Then He gives us two jarring contrasts in gift giving, a snake instead of a fish, a scorpion instead of an egg; two striking stinging opposites. Fish and eggs are real food. Snakes and scorpions are poisonous. Snakes strike low and unexpectedly; our momentary anger and defensive outbursts. Scorpions sneak inside our clothes and sting; our regrets, remorse and guilt. If you take these illustrations seriously and think of what they might mean in our dealings with our children, we probably remember the inadvertent hurts of commission and omission having taken place in their upbringing. The over discipline, the under discipline and the non-discipline all come into play.

But it’s not limited to child raising. It can also be carried into the way we have dealt with others in the past and the attitudes we carry right now as we start any day. “Lead us not into the temptation of relying on our strategies of relational adjustment.” Our self-justification through good intentions is that deadly stinger. That’s a big stinger from the devil. God does not tempt anyone (James 1:11-13).

Now on to Matthew. Matthew’s take is a bit more extensive (Mt.6:9-13). He is approaching prayer from the aspect of the humble King of Heaven teaching His subjects how to be direct and honest with the Father. While Mark was brief Matthew expands. In fact the way Matthew includes Jesus’ teaching on prayer is to make it like the double doors to a banquet room. When both are opened the expansiveness is evident. The one door is faith, the other is grace. Both bid your entry into the real presence. This is more than intellectual contemplation. It is God’s heart being opened to receive our heart’s hunger and thirst for forgiveness, truth, love, life and the only relationship that can fill these heart’s deepest longings. You have to keep in mind, be aware of, realize, the One who is doing the teaching. He is Jesus, God the Son. He isn’t just saying a bunch of nice words and leaving. The Teacher is walking with us on our way.

Let’s keep the Matthew and Luke contrast together for comparisons’ sake.

Luke: “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation (Luke 11:2-4).”

Matthew: “This then, is how you should pray, “Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver is from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen (Mt.6:9-13).”

Both call us to recognize the Father. Matthew, true to his desire to emphasize Jesus as the spiritual King, keeps us aware that the Father’s location is the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the promised experience of eternity that is Holy because God and His name are Holy. He is the Holy ‘I AM’, the Holy Other, the spiritual personal and relational dimension who preceded the world and universe in which we live. Jesus is the exact image of God. We know and identify with Him to know the Father, that we are the Father’s children, the younger siblings of Jesus who is our elder brother, our Savior and our Lord. As we grow in Jesus we grow in the Father. God the Father is Holy which means the Son and the Spirit are Holy because they are One. The Son is our focus to know God in His fullness.

He has a Kingdom in which we are His subjects, citizens in His Kingdom and we represent Him in this world as His ambassadors (2Cor.5:20). That’s not just at His embassy on Sunday but wherever we go. We have been sealed by the Holy Spirit (Eph.1:13) and marked as Christ’s own forever in His Kingdom. That Kingdom is the context out of which we operate. His will is being faithful subjects in every next moment.

Temptation is walking through a valley that is like the road to Jericho filled with thieves and subtle traps. We walk it every day. It’s about the sacrifice that Jesus made that each of us could find and have a ‘change of heart.’ Jesus gave us, through the Cross, the way of life that restarts a dead heart. It is facing each and every next moment on the road with Jesus as the light for the heart’s walk through the ‘valley of the shadow of death (Ps.23).’ What Jesus does is to clear a path through the valley the heart knows it is in. He is the Person the heart is searching for, the Heart of hearts, the ‘arms-outstretched-hands-outreached-Heart,’ the ‘valley guide’ with His sword of the Spirit lighting the way. We’ve been in the valley since we were born.

It is the Holy Spirit whose honesty keeps us from parading before God with mindless rote platitudes, thinking God will be pleased that you have honored Him by prayer. Jesus exhibits Spirit-honesty in His daily walk. Whether it was the with the individual Samaritan woman at the well or the gathered hostile religious leadership and the political Roman authority, He was obedient to His Father’s will. He was respectful of all authority but clearly aware of the heart of the person in authority. His responses were always guided by His desire to please His Father.

So the context of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew has the same theme but a slightly different flavor. It is given in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount whose purpose is attitudinal. The Sermon on the Mount is given for heart re-assessing and re-shaping by re-placing the many attitudes of the past with the one attitude of Jesus (Php.2:5-11), humility before the Father wherever and with whomever we are.

We’ll continue with the spiritual tremors that continue from the continuing earthquakes rocking the hearts of those who receive the truth of the Gospel, the continued rock and role of grace, love and truth in Jesus the Christ, the Messiah. Jesus the Rock and the Messiah, His role.