The Mark – No.26b – Lord's Prayer 2

The commands of Jesus are the Mark, the target for the perfect life. To aim for and to hit the Mark is to conform to the image and likeness of God. To ignore, neglect, or miss the Mark is to sin. The commands provide stepping stones through earthly life, upon which the child of God survives tempests and deflects the boomeranging darts of pride. Adhering to the Mark aspiring immortals gain victory.

 

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Matthew 6:9

Have you ever wondered why Jesus told us to say "thy kingdom come"? To me it is the most curious line in this whole little nuclear reactor of a prayer.

Why would God tell us to call forth His Kingdom, either on earth or in heaven? Is it like asking us daily to vote for God as king? Or is it more like replicating creation when God called earth into being with His words?

Who are we to do such a thing as invite His kingdom to earth?

Can a mouse move a mountain?

Can a baby build a bridge?

Can a struggling, aspiring immortal transform this chaotic world?

Jesus knows that the power of our words, when said with sincerity, can move mountains, build bridges, and spin chaos into twine. So say it with confidence. Say it with conviction. Say it as if you are saying, "Earth be!

Thy kingdom come. Here and now. Why wait?

May God be the ruler of me, my family, my community, my country, my planet Earth. May His laws be obeyed, may His taxes be fair, may His education system be successful, may His court system be just, and may His army be victorious. May His people be healthy, wealthy and industrious, every last one of them.

"Thy will be done" is a clear, clean, simple, golden declaration. This phrase is the big long arms of mommy's fur coat; the coat we want to grow into. The literal Greek translation is "the birth of Your wants."

Not my will, no never when it differs from God's wants being born. God's will is the mark. God's will is His Kingdom come. God's will, as incomprehensible as it may be, quirky, unfair, circuitous, molasses slow, harsh, joyful, mysterious, and relieving, as it may seem, whatever it is; His will be done on earth as it always is done where He art in heaven. Trust.

The Mark – No.26a – Lord's Prayer 1

The commands of Jesus are the Mark, the target for the perfect life. To aim for and to hit the Mark is to conform to the image and likeness of God. To ignore, neglect, or miss the Mark is to sin. The commands provide stepping stones through earthly life, upon which the child of God survives tempests and deflects the boomeranging darts of pride. Adhering to the Mark aspiring immortals gain victory.

Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.

Matthew 6:9

Saying the Lord’s Prayer is like putting on your mom’s fur coat. It may not fit now, but when you grow up it will.

In the Mark number 25, we came to understand in a new way what it means to call God our Father. How wonderful! No father of the flesh can compare in wisdom and generosity to the Father by whose will and nothing else, you were born.

And yet, Christ doesn’t tell us to say My Father, but Our Father. We live as a family unit loving each other who we can see even as we love Him who we cannot see. My ability to be a good brother or sister is as important to fitting into this big fur coat as my ability to perceive as Father the Creator of the universe, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God who lead the Israelites out of Egypt and slavery. He is a very specific Person. He is not just anything we want him to be.

He is in heaven because the earth cannot contain Him. He is there and we are here. He is light-years above us. He is more magnificent than the sun, and more peaceful than the stars. His home is beyond the galaxies. His paintbrush sketches the nebula.

Holy is His name because He indescribable. In the very first commandment to Moses He made it clear, “I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other Gods before me.” The Name on your lips and in your heart is so exclusive as to abhor casual usage. Imagine this: the Name above all names that the Jews dared not say as a word, YHWH, is suddenly called our Father.

For the only begotten Son to tell us to call the Lord of all Father was the very beginning of Christ’s mission to bring the children of Adam and Eve back from distrust and banishment.

Awesome! 

The Mark – No.16 The Golden Mile

The commands of Jesus are the Mark, the target for the perfect life. To aim for and to hit the Mark is to conform to the image and likeness of God. To ignore, neglect, or miss the Mark is to sin. The commands provide stepping stones through earthly life, upon which the child of God survives tempests and deflects the boomeranging darts of pride. Adhering to the Mark aspiring immortals gain victory.      

And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.

Matthew 5:41

The second mile is the fun mile. Being forced to do something is no fun. A client wants more than you expected to give and so you have work through the night, or during a party you wanted to attend; a teacher gives a lot of homework on your birthday, a friend begs you to do something that you don’t expect to like. Getting over the hump of doing what you don’t want to do is difficult. But the second mile, doing an excellent job at it, staying longer than you need to turns the whole situation on its side! The second mile is your own turf! It is where you adopt the idea and make it your own. The second mile is where the angels come to meet you to play. The second mile is golden; go there as often as you can. Joy.

The Mark – 15, Roll Over in Court

The commands of Jesus are the Mark, the target for the perfect life. To aim for and to hit the Mark is to conform to the image and likeness of God. To ignore, neglect, or miss the Mark is to sin. The commands provide stepping stones through earthly life, upon which the child of God survives tempests and deflects the boomeranging darts of pride. Adhering to the Mark aspiring immortals gain victory.

 

“…and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give him your cloak as well.”

Matthew 5:40

Another in the series that forbids retaliation, this command pushes us a little farther out on the limb by telling us to give the thief even more than He is grabbing. It is the step that follows the command not to try to recover anything stolen from us.

Give your opponent even more than what (s)he demands!

In short, avoid court. It is a horrible place to be. Don’t just settle with resentment in your heart. Be willing to look like you lost, like you were guilty. Be willing to disrobe, to be cold!

If you want to abide in the land of God and His angels, then you must rise above human nature. You must focus on nothing more than becoming Christ-like through obedience. Nothing on earth is worth more than this lesson. No warmth on a cold day. No material good, no clinging to the notion of earthly justice, no decadent sense of pride compares to the abundance in store for those who practice letting go for God’s sake.

Invest yourself in God and watch the return increase your net worth.

Demonstrate your devotion; don’t just sing it.

After the sting, see how well this works. You won’t know how much suffering this approach saved you, but giving more than the disputed coat directly hits the target which releases pure joy into your core. Be like him who said,

Psalm 40: “I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”

The Mark – No. 11 About Adultery

The commands of Jesus are the Mark, the target for the perfect life. To aim for and to hit the Mark is to conform to the image and likeness of God. To ignore, neglect, or miss the Mark is to sin. The commands provide stepping stones through earthly life, upon which the child of God survives tempests and deflects the boomeranging darts of pride. Adhering to the Mark aspiring immortals gain victory.

But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery.

Matthew 5:28

Focused aspiring immortals hand in hand

Stroll carefully and confidently on the straight and narrow path

Loving God with every breath and with pure hearts

Not concerned that

Invisibly He watches from on high, to judge them by their mating love.

For Adam and Eve, it wasn’t the curiosity about the forbidden fruit, or even heeding the serpent’s skeptical words that expelled them from His Garden, but actually eating it. The temptation to sin is not the crime, only the doing of it.

Adultery is the exception because the lust is the sin, even without the act. Lust is disloyalty. Lust supplants the spouse in one’s heart, if not yet in the bed. In Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the punishment for adultery is death for both parties. God deplores a divided heart.   

His love is loyal, abiding, unchanging; it is not fickle or double minded. To be like God, one must first and foremost love like God.