Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: The Lord's Prayer, as it is called by Protestants or or the Our Father as Catholics name it, is a brief prayer, ever so brief. It takes 21 seconds. It was taught by a Jewish rabbi 2,000 years ago.
His name was Jesus.
And my name is Mark Rutland. I'm delighted that you've joined me for this episode of the Leader's Notebook. I'm teaching in this series from my book 21 seconds to change your world.
At the end of this podcast, someone is going to come on and tell you how to get this book in English or in Spanish. Porque lo tenemos en espanol bainti unos segundos parvacambiar sumundo. We want you to have it in English or in Spanish and the announcer at the end of this podcast is going to tell you exactly how to get it at a great discount and to get as many copies as you want for you and your friends or for your study group or your your cell group or whatever. I want you to have this at the end of the podcast. Every time in this series, we're going to pray together the Lord's prayer and the 23rd Psalm.
You may be so familiar with this particular prayer that you have trouble paying attention to it anymore.
Sometimes it just becomes like an old shoe. You don't even know it's there.
On the other hand, maybe it wasn't part of your tradition and it is still relatively unfamiliar to you. Either way, my aim in this series and in the book, which I want you to have, is to give you a fresh perspective to help you see it with new eyes and an open heart.
This prayer is recorded in the Bible in two places. You might just make a note of these and write them down so you can look them up. Even though you say, I know those passages like the back of my hand. Why don't you look them up when you can access your Bible and and read them again? Matthew 6, 9:13 and Luke 11:2:4, Matthew 6, 9:13, and Luke 11:2:4.
Now, in Matthew's account, Jesus teaches the prayer as a part of the Sermon on the Mount.
He is apparently making a contrast between religious ostentation and long, flowery verbose prayers of those who are showing off their prayers and the beautiful simplicity of the Lord's Prayer.
The words are similar in both accounts, though Matthew includes a few words not mentioned in Luke's and those words are these used more often by Protestants than by Catholics. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
These words appear at the end and might be called a doxology or a liturgical response, Protestants almost universally included in the prayer. And since Vatican ii, this ancient doxology is also now included in the Catholic Mass and in the private devotions of many Catholics.
All in all, these minor variations aside, the Lord's Prayer is the one prayer prayed across virtually all denominational, national, generational, linguistic boundaries.
I truly believe it is safe to say that at any given moment, in any day, every minute of every day, somewhere in the world, some individual is praying the Lord's Prayer.
Indeed, it may be equally safe to say that some Christian group, church prayer gathering or underground cell somewhere in the world is reciting the Lord's Prayer aloud together in at any given moment.
In May of 2014, Pope Francis made his historic visit to Jerusalem.
While he was there, he met with and humbly kissed the hands of six Holocaust survivors at Yad Vashem.
Encouraged by the Israeli government to do so, he became the first pope ever to visit the victims of acts of Terror Memorial.
The memorial commemorates all the nation's victims of Palestinian and Arab terrorism, going all the way back to 1851.
Then, at the Western Wall, Pope Francis knelt and prayed with his forehead against the massive ancient stones of the Western Wall, as countless thousands before him have done. He wrote a brief prayer, folded it, and tucked it into the wall.
When asked later what he wrote, he said it was the Our Father written in Spanish, his native language.
It has been debated for 2000 years whether Jesus was teaching his followers a model of prayer or a model prayer.
Some feel strongly that he was teaching us a style of prayer, simple, clear, humble and unassuming, economical in its language.
They feel that he was talking about the way to pray, the kinds of things that are appropriate to pray about.
Others, however, feel that Jesus was actually giving his followers exact words to say.
In other words, that he was giving his church a liturgical and devotional prayer for public and private use, that we're to pray the Lord's Prayer.
No one knows, of course, which of these was in Jesus mind when he taught the prayer.
Perhaps both or some of both.
What is apparent is that the prayer has become both. To the body of Christian believers worldwide, Jesus Prayer continues to change lives today.
Let me just give you one example.
I had a counseling session with an elderly World War II combat many years ago, a veteran still tortured by a scene of such horror from his time in the Pacific that he said he had not slept without a nightmare since 1943.
In blasting open an enemy machine gun nest, he had killed some civilians whom the enemy soldiers were using as human shields.
He had not seen those civilians until it was too late to stop the blast.
The nightmare he relived nightly was a child's arm that hurtled through the air and hit him in the face night after night after night. No matter what drugs he took or sleeping pills or whatever, there was nothing he said, that he could do. For decades, from 1943 when the incident happened until I met him in the 1990s, he woke up screaming night after night for all those decades. He and his wife had nearly lost their minds.
As we went through the counseling session, I introduced them or reintroduced them. They had certainly known the Lord's Prayer, but we began to work our way through it. Line upon line, word upon word.
We prayed it together. We thought about it some more. We prayed about it. We prayed it.
I urged him to pray it 20 times before he went to sleep that night.
The next morning when we met for our next session, he told me that he had the sweetest night's sleep he had experienced since 1943.
Since then he has told me that he has committed to keep on praying the Lord's Prayer. And then he added in the 23rd Psalm, as I suggested.
And he told me some months later, the Lord's Prayer has become my best friend and Psalm 23 is my second best friend.
Pretty good friends, I'd say.
In the years following, I kept up with him and he let me know that his inner healing was powerful, continuing, and abiding. And he put it all down to experiencing God's healing power and grace through the Lord's Prayer and subsequently Psalm 23.
Now let's talk a little bit about the structure of the Lord's Prayer itself.
By studying the prayer Jesus taught, we can clearly see how he understood prayer, its purposes, and its principal areas of expression.
There are five topics in six sections or divisions of the prayer.
One topic is simply worshiping God as He is.
This is at the beginning and at the end of the prayer.
The other four are basically petitions with secondary elements of submission and confession of need.
So let's just think about it. Section one prays Section two Petition for God's kingdom and his will the third section is a petition for daily providence.
Section four is a petition for forgiveness and healing from our own unforgiveness. Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who owe us. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.
Section 5 is a petition for protection from sin and evil and or the evil One himself.
And then section six is the same as section one, and that is praise.
The four petitions listed above can be and commonly are listed as seven. However, that requires dividing the petitions, and I believe they are intentionally conjoined.
God's will and his kingdom are one, not two.
My forgiveness and my granting forgiveness to others cannot and should not be separated.
In fact, in Matthew when Jesus comments on the prayer, he says as much.
Finally, I do not believe it is possible to separate temptation and evil in the final petition.
Having said all that, whether you list it as four petitions, as I have done, or seven as has been described elsewhere, they are the body of a brief and powerful prayer that can change your world.
Irrespective of how we divide the number of petitions, we can see that Jesus models an appropriate prayer protocol, if you will, that begins and ends with praise.
The praise at the first and the praise at the end is altogether conscious of who God is.
The petitions are about human need, but the praise at the beginning and the end is about the divine character summarized in four powerful holiness, kingship, power, and glory.
Think about it. Thy name is holy.
Thine is the kingdom, Thine is the power, Thine is the glory.
All four are about God, not us, not our needs, not our sins and not our service.
So much of what passes for praise today is nothing but saccharine emotionalism filled with narcissistic self absorption.
How I feel about God, how much I love God, how good his love makes me feel. How victorious God makes me, me, me, me.
The Lord's prayer begins and ends with God alone. His name, his kingdom, his power, his glory.
Yes, in between God's holiness and God's glory, I am free to express My needs.
But what good are my petitions if God is not who he said he is?
Now, what about those needs?
Jesus tells us the categories of things that are reasonable for us to seek from a holy and loving Father. There is nothing at all wrong and everything right about confessing to God my dependence on his grace.
I will make a wreck of it. Apart from his royal will over my life's course and direction.
Without God I cannot even feed myself.
I need his forgiveness. I need his grace to forgive others.
Apart from his guidance and Strength. I will walk into every trap of satanic evil.
If we never used a single word from the Lord's Prayer but sincerely prayed along the lines of this model in our own words, I do not for a moment believe God would be offended.
Likewise, it is hardly plagiarism to pray the exact words of the Lord's Prayer.
I cannot see how the words, the exact words of Christ can be improved upon.
The point is, either way, it is the most important prayer you will ever pray.
If you say it is a loose pattern of prayer and not one to be prayed from memory, then I say pray that pattern ferociously.
But if you say it is the model prayer and that the words of Jesus, the words that he taught, should be prayed without our tampering with them, then I say pray it sincerely and in faith and not in vain repetition.
I want you to stay tuned until the end of this podcast and we're going to talk about how you can get this book. As many copies as you want for you or for your friends.
In ingles o in castigliono en ti uno segundos parva cambillar su mundo. We have it both in English and in Spanish. I want you to have it, have as many copies as you want.
I hope that you'll use it in prayer, your own self, and that you'll study it together with your Sunday school class or home cell group or a married couple.
But as we end today, as we're going to through every episode of this series on 21 seconds, I want you to pray with me both the Lord's Prayer and then Psalm 23.
If you can possibly where you are, close your eyes. Pray it with me. Pray aloud with me. Let me guide you, but let's pray it together. You notice I didn't say let's repeat the Lord's Prayer.
What I said was, let's pray it. Just as Jesus taught us to pray by saying, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
Amen.
Now Psalm 23.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
It means a lot to me that we just shared those two great devotional masterpieces together.
Thank you for praying the Lord's Prayer with me. Thank you that we prayed Psalm 23 together.
May God bless you. My name is Mark Rutland, and this has been the Leader's Notebook.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: To order a copy of 21 seconds, please visit the store at drmarkrutland.com Enter the promo code 21seconds to receive $5 off of each each book. Or you can call us toll free at 888-823-8772. Thank you for listening to the Leader's Notebook.
