God is Love

Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples. 

Jesus said to them “When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be Your name,
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation."

Dear Cooper:

I wonder if today I might make a gentle suggestion? Can we remember to pray each day from now on? When? How about right now? “Now” generally is a great time to pray. So go ahead … its no problem I will wait.

What? Good question. What to pray? Well, the prayer Jesus gave us is a good place to start. He shows us that when we pray we should give God glory, thank God, profess faith, submit to God, seek help following God’s ways and tell Him we love Him. Stuff like that. It helps us remember who God is and how much we need Him. It is good for us to think about this. But there is another reason to pray. We need to come clean – its called confession of sin. Ya, sin again. Remember I said sin separates us from God? But God wants us with Him forever; this is His desire in the very nature of who God is. God knows our sin? Of course He does - but we need to know it, name it and regret it – we then give it to God and He deals with it.

So, take your time … I can wait.

… so, like wow! Doesn’t that feel good.

Giving our garbage and nonsense over to God, thanking Him for who He is and all He does, and being brought close to Him. That is restoration. Doing this often (like everyday, morning, noon and night even) helps us learn who God is, why He Loves us and what the problem is with the way we are doing things. We also learn what God is doing to cleanup and put right what is clearly going wrong in this world. As we pray certain thoughts and questions will come up. Christians do not fear questions – why? If asked humbly, questions lead us to God’s answers. God has given us the Bible to help with this. The MOST important lessons you will ever learn are from the Bible. Why? Well the other stuff you learn are life-skills for this short time we live on earth – the Bible teaches eternal life-skills.

In many ways the Bible is the ultimate Love Story. Why did God create … well …everything? Because He is Love – creation is a subject, object and action of divine Love. One must be free to Love, so God chose to give us the freedom to Love Him. This means He also, by definition, chose to give the freedom NOT to Love Him, right? Its all bound up together. And what did we do with our freedom? We have basically chosen to love ourselves above God. That’s where this sin thing comes in. But, God wants us back. The Bible then shows us how we have walked away and what has happened. More amazingly, it also shows how great God’s Love nature is – it tells how our God of Love respects our freedom (and so His choice for us), but is working to help us love Him. It is an epically big story; and right there in the centre of that story is your Baptism.

Your mom asked me how to prepare for Baptism. Well first, ask mom and dad to read you the Bible everyday and then at bedtime read a Bible story. So, try this - there are 21 chapters in the Gospel of John. One each day gets you most of the way to the Baptism. Bryan and Candice can read to you on the phone – or Skype! – how cool would that be! Then you can all pray together!! Ok – that thought just makes me smile. It might seem strange at first – but get them to try it till the Baptism – it will be amazing – trust me on this one. OK, see what you can do. Use that cute smile of yours; they’ll be putty in your hands.

t HE

Thursday, January 5, 2017