It happened to all of us kids at my church. When you got to seventh grade you started confirmation class. Unlike the Roman Catholic kids we knew who got to leave school early on Wednesdays to go to Catechism class, we had to wait until AFTER school (big gyp.) Again I confess that I don’t remember a lot, but we did have to memorize much of Luther’s Small Catechism and, strangely, that actually stuck with me.

Lord’s prayer. Third petition. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What does this mean? The good and gracious will of God is done even without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that it may be done among us also.” I memorized it, but it was many years before the radical notion behind the explanation hit me. Luther turns all the petition so they aren’t just prayers about something God should do in general, but they are about what God should do to me. If I pray that God’s will be done, I’m praying that I should do God’s will.

It turns out praying is a very dangerous activity because every prayer in some way is about the will of God being done and that prayer always asks that we do the will of God. Prayer isn’t some magical formula to get God to do something we want done, but rather a request that we might do what God wants done.

Important Prayer Lesson No. 3. Whenever you pray, you are putting yourself in the service of God.

Read Matthew 6:9-13  and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne