July summary
of sermon themes
How does each sermon connect to this theme?
There is a beautiful correspondence between the content of the Lord’s Prayer and the content of our lives — a mingling of eternity and the everyday, the majestic and the mundane, the glorious and the common, the lofty and the lowly. Along with specific phrases of the Lord’s Prayer, this month will also add, two other petitions that can become part of our ongoing conversations with God.
July 5: In this Service for the Departed, we pray that God would make us alive in His spirit. Rather than being bound to an earthly perspective of life, we know that Christ is Lord of life and death and He brings freedom, identity, endurance in suffering, and eternal life.
July 12: This Sunday begins our focus on the Lord’s Prayer with the phrase, “Your kingdom come.” We will come to know that the kingdom is at hand - it is within our space, time, and being.
July 19: Encapsulating all we need to exist, we pray that God would “Give us this day our daily bread.” It a prayer for earthly sustenance, for Christ - our spiritual nourishment, for communal responsibility, and for daily dependence and trust.
July 25: Praying that God would “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” reveals the need for both recognition and response.
July midweek: In praying to love more and more, we recognize that any outpouring of love from us is rooted in God’s love, revealed in Christ. We are called to respond to this grace with tangible acts of love towards God and our neighbor, that reveal His love in our lives.
And this I pray... We simply pray because, as God’s children, we have been commanded to, and because it glorifies Him and enriches us. God is glorified when we are obedient to His commands and His name is kept holy. He is glorified when His children revere Him and seek to know Him. In this month, I encourage you to seek a more intensive and extensive discipline of prayer that causes each one to never neglect the opportunity that has been opened to us by God, to approach and commune with Him. Is it not an amazing privilege?
John S Schnabel