Message from Rev. Robert Recio on

Last Sunday, we looked to a scene in John’s gospel where Jesus appeared in the middle of the storm on Galilee speaking words of comfort to the worried disciples. This week in Revelation 1:9-20, we will go to another moment in John’s when the risen King Jesus revealed himself to John in a powerful and reassuring way. Where Jesus is, who Jesus is, and what Jesus says in this revelation to John should encourage our hearts to trust in him no matter what we’re going through.

In John 6 we read about Jesus showing up as the disciples faced a fierce storm on the Sea of Galilee. The story is familiar, and so is the sense of fear that we often face in difficult times in our lives. This Sunday we will look at this story and see how it's connected to the bigger story in Scripture of God delivering his people, and how it gives us great comfort today.

We conclude our series in the Lord’s Prayer with the final petition. From the greatness of God’s glory, to the mundane, the prayer closes in the depths, the hardest realities of life in this world. Words like “save” and “trial” and “deliver” are words of crisis. They remind us that to pray this prayer means to be thrust into the middle of a cosmic struggle. The final petition reminds us how we live in full dependence upon our Heavenly Father to deliver us and bring about the fullness of his Kingdom.

To pray for forgiveness is perhaps the most foundational prayer of the Christian life. And while forgiveness is such a basic part of our walk, we often have an uncomfortable relationship with it; praying as the forgiven and yet also the unforgiving; as those who have been forgiven and loved by Christ, yet we struggle to forgive. In the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer we’ll see the profoundly humble posture of prayer and how through the wonderful promises of the Gospel we are empowered to be not only forgiven but forgiving.

The Lord’s Prayer has been teaching us to pray in a way that is God-centered, pulling us out of ourselves so that we can be oriented in God’s goodness and greatness. This Sunday we come to the first petition addressing our needs, as we pray, “give us this day our daily bread.” This petition is striking as we go from exalting God’s name, longing for his kingdom, and seeking his will, to a reminder of God’s care in tending to our basic needs as human beings.

The prayer for God’s kingdom to come has meant one of two contradictory things; an over-spiritualized emphasis on escaping this world in order to be with God in his heavenly kingdom or an activist spirit seeking to usher in the kingdom through our own good works. Yet it is best seen as a confession of clear-eyed realism that acknowledges this world is not as it should be and a prayer of concrete hope longing for God to make right what has been disrupted by sin.

The prayer for God’s kingdom to come has meant one of two contradictory things; an over-spiritualized emphasis on escaping this world in order to be with God in his heavenly kingdom or an activist spirit seeking to usher in the kingdom through our own good works. Yet it is best seen as a confession of clear-eyed realism that acknowledges this world is not as it should be and a prayer of concrete hope longing for God to make right what has been disrupted by sin.

This Sunday we come to the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, where Jesus teaches us to pray, “hallowed be your name.” It sounds so formal to our modern ears. And yet this petition draws us into the greatness of God over all creation and our lives. We always risk our prayer lives becoming too mundane; just a list of needs. But this prayer begins with the crucial, prayer oxygenating recognition of our need for God and for Him to be God in our lives and world.

This week, we will explore what it means to pray to our God who is in heaven. If praying to our Father reminds us of the God to whom we have access and intimacy because of the work of the Son, we will see how praying to our God in heaven reminds us of the power and presence of the God who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power at work within us (Eph 3.20).