PRAY LIKE JESUS

June 04, 2019

Rev. Jason Gaskin

If you are like me you probably think that there is one Lord's prayer. The one that goes "Our Father who art in heaven..." This prayer in the past few years has really help shaped and formed my own prayer life. And that is the point. Many of us pray. But we pray with no form. We just kind of do it. If we are not careful... I know this all to well... our prayer life becomes an exclusive want list for how our personal needs can be met. Or merely about our health or the health of those in our circle. But when we begin to dive into the prayer life of Jesus it seems to push our prayer life away from ourselves and toward God and God's will for our lives and the world. It is Jesus' prayer in John 17 prior to him being crucified. We get this crystal clear view of the prayer of life of Jesus. The prayer was selfless (not that Jesus didn't pray for himself) it was about a yearning for unity. At the heart of Jesus prayer was for his disciples and future believers to experience this amazing bond that the Father and Son share. This same bond God doesn't hoard but extends to his followers. Here is where this gets sticky. Many of us are not naive to think of the division that exists within our lives. The division in our families, our churches, our communities, our nation. We are well aware of it. We hear about it all the time. Disunity is icky. And many of us have taken the prayer of Jesus and thrown it in the trash. I don't know necessarily what to do about the disunity in our lives. But I know for sure what Jesus would do. Pray for it. Yearn for it. And be crazy enough to believe that it is possible for two people of opposing ideals and views to sit at the table together.