Wednesday after the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on September 15, 2021 by under
Scripture: St. Matthew 6:9-14 (NKJV)
6:9 In this manner, therefore, pray:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.
10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13 And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
14 “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”
Devotion
Many who pray the Lord’s Prayer likely have no idea exactly what they are petitioning the Lord to grant them. People who know Luther’s Small Catechism are blessed with an expanded understanding of all Seven Petitions contained within our Lord’s Prayer. Luther’s exposition of the Third Petition (“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”) uncovers a truth that most would definitely not be happy with. The Third Petition brings one to pray against one’s very self!
Luther’s Large Catechism expands even further on this understanding: “For where the Word of God is preached, accepted or believed, and produces fruit, there the holy cross cannot be wanting. And let no one think that he shall have peace; but he must risk whatever he has upon earth—possessions, honor, house and estate, wife and child, body and life. That hurts indeed our flesh and the old Adam. For the test is to be steadfast and to suffer with patience whatever afflictions befall us, and to yield whatever is taken from us.” (LC III. 65-66, p. 457-458, Jacobs)
As strange as it sounds (that is, to our sinful flesh), what a blessing the Lord brings us to pray—that we would not desire His will to be bent to ours, but, rather, that ours would ever be bent to His as we are brought to live through Christ crucified!
Prayer: O Lord, we beseech Thee, let Thy continual pity cleanse and defend Thy Church; and because it cannot continue in safety without Thy succor, preserve it evermore by Thy help and goodness; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
