Where We Start Matters

S - "When you speak with God, don’t talk on and on as people do who don’t know God. They think God likes to hear long speeches. Don’t be like them. Your Father knows what you need even before you ask. You should speak to him like this: “Our Father in heaven, we honor your name.”" Matthew 6:7-9 

O - Where we start matters.  Jesus comes to enable us to know where to start in our thinking, speaking, living, praying and loving. When it comes to God, he invites and instructs us to start at only one place - Father; more specifically our Father and the focus is love; that we are loved and wanted unconditionally (at our worst not just at our best).  Religion wants us to start at Creator/Judge and the focus is sin (performance). While God is the Creator Judge and sin is an issue it is not the most important one.  Theology wants us to start at Eternal/Almighty and the focus is accurate information (knowing about). God is the Eternal/Almighty and accurate information is not a bad thing but it too is not the most important one. Without love it all becomes noise and nothing even if it is true.

 

A - If we start at Creator/Judge and move toward Father that "father" is never fully pleased with us. If we start at Eternal/Almighty and move toward Father that "father" is distant and disinterested in us. Religion calls us to the Courtroom; Theology calls us to the Schoolroom; and Heaven is calling us to our own room in our Father's House. "Then Jesus said to the crowds [all the people] and to his followers: … none of you should be called a teacher. You have only one teacher, and all of you are brothers and sisters. Don’t call anyone on earth your father. All of you have the same Father in heaven." Matthew 23:1, 8-9 

 

P - Our Father,

Thank you for sending Jesus so I would know where to start every day, every circumstance in my thinking about You, others and life on earth. Thank you for wanting me at my worst … for loving us first and most and for refusing to change your mind. Thank you for inviting us to our own rooms in your house.  I do love you back.

Steve