Prayer

Thy Kingdom Come

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

Pray, then, in this way: “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…” Matthew 6:9-10

Even though Jesus often talks about the kingdom, many of us struggle to understand what Jesus meant by “thy kingdom come.” We read two different phrases in the gospels – “kingdom of heaven” and “kingdom of God.” In Matthew, “kingdom of heaven” is used, while in Mark and Luke, “kingdom of God” is used. This is because Jews show respect for God by not pronouncing his name. Matthew is preserving the culturally-correct quote “kingdom of heaven” while Mark and Luke are explaining to Gentile audiences that “heaven” is a reference to God.

The primary understanding of the kingdom of heaven was God’s reign over the lives of people who enthrone him as king. The rabbis knew that most of the world did not know God, but the scriptures said that one day, “The LORD will be king over all the earth; in that day the LORD will be the only one, and His name the only one” (Zechariah 14:9).

The question of Jesus’ time was when and how God would establish this kingdom. It was thought that when the Messiah came, the Kingdom of God would arrive all at once with great glory. But Jesus disagrees:

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:20

Jesus meant that a person is brought into the kingdom of God when a person repents and decides to accept God as his King, and it is something that happens in a person’s heart, not a political movement or visible display of God’s power.

So what did Jesus mean by the phrase “your kingdom come”? He is talking about God’s reign over our lives, not about a future display of God’s power. He uses it in parallel with the next line in the text. The two phrases “your kingdom come” and “your will be done on earth” are synonymous. These phrases both mean, “May all nations of the earth enthrone you as king! May everyone on earth know you and do your will!”

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Our Father

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

“This, then, is how you should pray: `Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…” Matthew 6:9

Jesus begins to teach his disciples how to pray by addressing God as “Our Father.” He was not unique in this respect – other Jewish prayers of the day began with, “Our Father, Our King…” which is “Avinu, Malkenu….” This address encompasses both God’s love and his sovereignty, like Jesus’ prayer does, describing both God’s fatherly love, but also his holiness. The plural pronoun “our” is used out of respect for God, to not be too intimate.

The thing that is unique about Jesus is not how he told his disciples to address God, but how he addressed God himself, as “My Father.” No one else in all the Bible refers to God as “My Father.” There is an interesting reason for this. The Jews had a tradition about the Messiah that was related to the key Messianic promise that God gave to King David:

The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. (2 Samuel 7:11-14)

From this prophecy, they understood that when the Messiah came, he would have a relationship with God so close that when he prayed, he would refer to God as “My Father.”

This gives us a fascinating insight into an early story of Jesus’ life. When Jesus was twelve and his parents found him in the temple, Jesus said, “Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49) This was the first time that Jesus made a messianic reference to himself, showing that he understood who he was since childhood.

Throughout Jesus’ ministry, he refers to God as “my father,” and every time he used those words, his listeners would have heard it as a bold claim to be the One who God had promised would come.

Jesus and Disciples

Even This is For the Good

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

“I will bless the LORD at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. ” Psalms 34:1

One of the ways the rabbis interpreted the phrase “love the Lord your God with all of your heart” was to point out that since we have both joy and sadness in our heart, we need to love God both when we are happy and when we are sad. We are to bless the Lord at all times, as the psalmist says we should do today. As Paul points out, we should “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

The rabbis had some wonderfully wise prayers in order to bless the Lord for both the highs and lows in life. When they went through a long, difficult time and finally had relief, or celebrated some happy event for which they waited, they said, “Blessed is He who has allowed us to live, and sustained us, and enabled us to reach this day!”

When a son returned home from war, or when a baby was born, or some other wonderful thing, they stopped to praise God for bringing them to that point in their lives. Even today this prayer is used, and is a favorite for many.

Even in times of grief, when someone died or they heard tragic news, they blessed God. They said “Blessed is he who is the true judge.” It was a proclamation that God is righteous and good even in the midst of terrible times, and it reminded them that he will in the end bring justice, even when it doesn’t seem to be present at the time.

They have an interesting, wise, but difficult saying that is often said on hearing tragic news. Gam zo le tovah – “Even this is for the good.” The first time I heard this saying was from a dear friend in Israel who had learned that his wife had breast cancer. If you’ve never lived through difficult times, it’s not appropriate to quote this line as an empty platitude to someone who is. But from the lips of my good friends who were anxious and in grief, it was a statement of great faith in God — that even in the worst times, we know that a loving God intends it for good.

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Blessing or Thanks?

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

“Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits!” Psalm 103:1-2

From Jesus’ day until the present, the Jewish people have had a tradition of saying numerous short prayers throughout the day called “blessings.” The idea is not to bless objects and people, in the sense of conferring holiness on them, but to bless God, with the understanding that we are focusing on him as the source of all blessing. The word for bless, barak, also means to kneel, suggesting that when we bless God, we mentally bow on our knees to worship him. Even Jesus prayed these prayers of blessing, following the customs of his day.

In the most ordinary things they found ways of praising God. When the first flowers were seen on the trees in the spring, they said, “Blessed is he who did not omit anything from the world, and created within it good creations and good trees for people to enjoy!” When they heard thunder they also blessed God by saying, “Blessed is he whose strength and power fill the world!” This pervasive act of prayer kept God’s presence and love continually on their minds.

A blessing is very close to a prayer of thanks, but it actually is not, and in some ways it is better. For instance, when we see a rainbow, we can praise and bless the Lord for his creativity, and the beauty he designs into creation. But to thank him for it implies that God gave it to us as a gift, or that our approval is required. Thankfulness requires God to have personally done something for us, but blessing is simply a prayer that glorifies him and reminds us of his supremacy in all things.

In my own experience, I have found that the practice of these prayers of blessing changes a person’s entire inner attitude. Continually praising God for his good gifts reminds us that the world is saturated with God’s presence and that we are under his constant care.

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What Our Prayers Reveal

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the good gifts to those who ask him!” Matthew 7:11

Abraham Heschel once said, “The issue of prayer is not prayer, the issue of prayer is God.”* He means that our prayers reveal what we believe about God, and when we have the right understanding of God, our prayers will reflect it.

Luke records that the saying about God as a loving Father who enjoys giving good gifts to his children comes after telling two parables about the importance of persistence in prayer (Luke 11:5-8). Jesus is saying that we should pray believing in God’s love for us.

I’ve started listening to my prayers to see what they say about what I believe about God. One prayer that I have heard and re-thought is when I have asked God to forgive me for worrying. Jesus says, “Do not worry.” But sometime we conflate that into meaning that worry is a sin that we need to repent from. Worry is a natural response to the difficulties of life, and the Lord knows our weakness.

I think Jesus’ words about not worrying are to reassure us of God’s care, not to lay another impossible expectation on us. To have peace in our hearts is a goal that we grow toward, and God does want us to grow in faith. But I don’t think, personally, that God is angry and counts it as a sin when we do worry, and so we shouldn’t ask for God’s forgiveness for worrying about our problems. I think that doing so makes us believe that God is a heartless perfectionist who is angry even with our weaknesses.

Often we approach God assuming that he is constantly angry, uninterested in our problems, distant, or unable to take care of us. Or worse yet, we give up on prayer all together. Here Jesus reminds us that our perception of God is all wrong. Of all people, Jesus can speak of the heart of God, and when we remember Jesus’ great love that brought him to the cross, we can always be reassured of the amazing love God has for us.

*Man’s Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism (New York, Scribners, 1966) p. 87.

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Praying with Chutzpah

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

Then Abraham said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall peak; suppose thirty are found there?” God said, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.” And Abraham said, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord; suppose twenty are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the twenty.” Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak only this once; suppose ten are found there?…” Genesis 18:30-32

The verses above are from the conversation between Abraham and God about whether God would destroy the city of Sodom. Abraham argued tenaciously with God over the city, bargaining with God until the Lord agreed that even if only ten righteous people are found in Sodom, he would spare it.

We read this story with some surprise that a human would dare debate with God. Christians generally do not think it is appropriate to be so bold with God, saying as Abraham said, “Far be it from you to do such a thing – to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25).

The rabbis of Jesus’ day had an interesting answer for this brashness of Abraham toward God. Their interpretation was that it was as if Abraham is a child who is especially close to his father, trusting him so completely that he can say anything to him. His repeated petitions are like a little boy who keeps pulling on his father’s shirt tails, pleading with his dad, begging him over and over for a treat.

Jesus likes that kind of persistence himself. He is impressed by the Gentile woman who argues with him until he heals her daughter (Mark 7:26). He also tells a parable of a widow who keeps pounding on the door of judge until he hears her case (Lk 18:1-7). If an unrighteous judge will grant her request because she is persistent, how much more will a good and loving God answer her prayers! This is to teach us that we should always pray and never give up. Doing so shows that we believe in God’s power and His abundant love for us.

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Learning About Prayer From Jesus

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God. Luke 6:12

Jesus was a man of prayer. He stayed up all night in prayer, arose early to pray, and taught his disciples to pray. How did people pray in Jesus’ time, and how did he probably pray? Understanding the traditions of Jewish prayer adds depth and meaning to Jesus’ teachings on the subject.

For instance, the prayer that Jesus probably prayed before he broke the bread at the Last Supper was probably something like, “Blessed is he who brings forth bread from the earth.” If the very next thing Jesus says is “This is my body, broken for you,” could he be hinting that just as God brings bread from the ground, he will bring Jesus, the Bread of Life out of the ground? It is an interesting thing to ponder. Our understanding of that passage is enriched by knowing the prayers of Jesus’ day.

Jesus also teaches many parables on the importance of prayer – about the persistent widow, and about the prayers of the Pharisee and the tax collector. We can learn much about the mind of Christ on prayer by grasping his teachings as they would have been understood in his time.

We can be especially enriched by understanding the prayer that Jesus taught us. Although we know it by heart, many struggle with some of the phrases like, “thy kingdom come” and “keep us from evil” that may seem foreign to us. Understanding his prayer in the context of the other prayers of his time will help us pray as Jesus intended for us to pray.

Of course, we need to be not just hearers of the word but doers as well. These articles will only be worthwhile if they inspire you to a new level of prayer, and a more intimate walk with your Heavenly Father.

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The Direction of Your Heart

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

“Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD? And who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart.” Psalm 24:3

The prayers that Jesus, Paul, and the Jewish people of their day prayed were a combination of spontaneous petitions and traditional prayers that were prayed at certain times of day. For thousands of years these petitions have remained nearly the same. In contemporary Protestant culture, we tend to disdain rote prayer, preferring the intimacy of spontaneous prayer and feeling that a repeated prayer is empty and hollow. We wonder how a person could avoid just “going through the motions.”

The answer is a concept that the rabbis developed known as kavanah. The word means direction, intention, or devotion, and the idea behind praying with kavanah is that you set the direction of your thinking toward God, and toward praying the memorized prayer “with all your heart.” A person who has kavanah focuses his entire being on prayer, and is not distracted by the chaos around him. He may have said the same prayer a thousand times, but his mind is immersed so deeply into the words that he is experiencing new insights and feelings from them each time that he has never experienced before.

In synagogues, above the ark that holds the Torah scrolls, there is often a plaque that says, “Know Before Whom You Stand.” That is exactly what it means to have kavanah in prayer – to have a sense of standing in the presence of God, to know that you are addressing the sovereign Lord of the universe. Prayer is so simple and it is easy to do it half-heartedly. But God deserves our best, not our least efforts in prayer.

Da Lifne Mi Atah Omed – Know Before Whom you Stand

 

Kavanah can go beyond prayer as well – our lives should also show it too. We should live each hour and every day with devotion and intention, fully aware of God’s presence all around us. When we do this, our lives will truly be the reflection of Christ, whose every desire was to please and honor God with his whole being.

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For more on this topic, see the chapter, “Kavanah:  The Direction of Your Heart” in Listening  to the Language of the Bible (En-Gedi Resource Center, Holland, 2005) which is available in the En-Gedi bookstore.

Kavanah – Praying with Intention

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD? And who may stand in His holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart. (Psalm 24:3)

The prayers that Jesus and Paul prayed were a combination of spontaneous petitions and traditional prayers that were prayed at certain times of day. One of them that is still prayed today is called the Amidah or “Eighteen Benedictions.”1 It is quite lengthy, and consists of prayers for all the various concerns of the Jewish people. For thousands years since Jesus lived, these petitions have stayed nearly the same.

In contemporary Protestant culture, we tend to disdain rote prayer, preferring the intimacy of spontaneous prayer and feeling that a repeated prayer is empty and hollow. We wonder how a person could avoid just “going through the motions.” The answer is a concept that the rabbis developed known as Kavanah. The word means “direction,” “intention,” or “devotion,” and the idea behind praying with kavanah is that you set the direction of your thinking toward God, and toward praying the memorized prayer “with all your heart.”

A person who has kavanah focuses his entire being on prayer, and is undistracted by the chaos around him. He may have said the same prayer a thousand times, but his mind is sunk so deeply into the words that he is experiencing new insights and feelings from them today that he has never experienced before.

In synagogues, above the ark that holds the Torah scrolls, there is often a plaque that says, “Know before whom you stand.” That is just what it means to have kavanah in prayer: to have a sense of standing in the presence of God, to know that you are addressing the sovereign Lord of the universe.

When I used to pray after crawling in bed, I would often fall asleep before finishing my prayer. After thinking about the lack of reverence this has for God, I now make myself kneel or stay awake in some way, or pray at a time of day when I’m more awake. He deserves our best, not our least efforts in prayer.

Kavanah can go beyond prayer as well – our lives should also show it too. We should live each hour and day with devotion and intention, being aware of God’s presence all around us. When we do this, our lives will truly be the reflection of Christ, whose every desire was to please and honor God in every way.

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Further reading:

See Listening to the Language of the Bible, by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2004. This is a collection of devotional essays that mediate on the meaning of biblical words and phrases in their original setting.

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).