Kingdom–Centered Prayer…and Happiness

REFLECTION QUOTES

“Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?”

~Jonathan Sacks, Jewish rabbi and scholar

“What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could…invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God…. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

“When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.”

~C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) in Mere Christianity

“It is much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.”

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), German theologian and pastor, executed for his opposition to Hitler

“It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men.”

~C.S. Lewis in Reflections on the Psalms (1958)

“Happiness is a matter of one’s most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.”

~Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), Irish-born author and philosopher

SERMON PASSAGE

Matthew 6:7-15 (NASB)
7 “And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. 8 So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.

9 “Pray, then, in this way:

‘Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 ‘Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
11 ‘Give us this day our daily bread.
12 ‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 ‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’

14 For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.”