Thought for Today
Psalm 8:1 O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
Jeremiah 29:12 Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you.
Luke 11:2 He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
Acts 4:24 When they heard it, they raised their voices together to God and said, "Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth, the sea, and everything in them,
What is God’s name? How do you address God when you talk to God? I asked this question yesterday and shared some of the names with which I am familiar. The topic is still on my mind today. I googled the question “What are the different names for God?” The question took me to a website, www.gotquestions.org, and there I found 20 different names for God with their respective Biblical references. Some are familiar names to me, some are not. Several of them are included in one of Greta’s and my favorite songs, El Shaddai, by Amy Grant.
On Sundays, during worship, listen to the names by which you, your minister and others address God. I admit to having certain favorite names I use to address God in prayer, Father, Heavenly Father, Merciful God, Good and Gracious God are among the names I most often use. One of the most interesting things I read in my google search on that website was “Each of the many names of God describes a different aspect of His many-faceted character.”
As we think about God, as we try to wrap our finite, human minds around the idea of our infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Creator how do we deal with all of this? The answer, of course, is that we cannot deal with the entirety of all the aspects of the Creator of all Creation. We are finite, temporal created beings and cannot begin to understand God in God’s entirety.
I have often written about the Leibnitzian Dilemma and mentioned it in my sermons. To paraphrase Leibnitz, we cannot simultaneously reconcile an omnipotent, loving God and the existence of evil. When I think about this, I usually add in my own mind, ‘we may not be able to reconcile them, but we believe in all 3 and encounter all 3 in life.’ Our ability and inability to understand it all are primary motivators in the prayer lives of Christians.
Irrespective of what we call God, regardless of which aspect of God we most often encounter and with no consideration of which aspect of God we individually consider primary, we turn to the God of Genesis 1:1, the God of John 3:16-17 to help us make it through the night. The disciples did just the same. It was common in the 1st century for followers of rabbis to ask their leader for a ‘model’ prayer, based on the leader’s teachings. Jesus gave his followers the prayer we call the Lord’s Prayer.
Do you ever reflect on your own prayer life? Is it composed of only spontaneous prayers prompted by what you encounter in your daily life? Is it regulated and regimented, restricted to specific times of day or to a limited range of topics? Do you even have a ‘prayer life?’
Many of us, when we were young children learned to pray at bedtime. Some of us knelt by our beds; many of us even used a common prayer, “I pray to God before I sleep; if I should die before I wake; I pray to God my soul to take.” I still remember that prayer from my childhood. Today I find it a bit morbid for me to have been praying about my soul and my death at a young age. Such considerations are much more applicable to my current age.
I do find that my personal prayer life has changed as I have aged. Today, my prayers are still offered at bedtime. But, today they are also offered spontaneously throughout the day as I encounter and grapple with the frustrations and problems of daily life. The range of topics for my prayers has greatly expanded. I pray for global and even universal issues. I also pray about trivial, insignificant issues. I pray about joys; I pray about sorrows; I pray with hope; I pray when I feel despair. ""Help Me Make It Through the Night" is a country ballad written and composed by Kris Kristofferson.” (en.wikipedia.org) I pray that song title often. I even expand the idea to include daytime.
How about you? How do you pray?
Stay safe, pray often, trust God,
Pastor Ray