LD 52: The Sixth Petition and Amen!

Merry Christmas All!  To the catechism of comfort we go…

There’s much here in the final week (as there is every week) of the Heidelberg calendar as we close off not only the Lord’s Prayer, but the entire catechism too.  I’m excited that this completes the teaching section on prayer but even more thrilled to get to the beginning of the Heidelberg Catechism.  Lord willing, I’ll make my way through the whole catechism this year.

I’m encouraged by how significant the theme of gratitude has been throughout the HC’s teaching on the Lord’s Prayer.  I do hope that my life will become an overflow of thankfulness to Him, so much so, that if an epitaph were written, it would simply say, “He was thankful to his Father.”

Anyway, I’m unsure of how to synthesize these three final questions (#’s 128, 128, and 129), so I’ll give separate (but brief) attention to each of them.

#127
The sixth request is so significant.  Just praying for this petition is a reminder that all of life is spiritual warfare.  I don’t think of life in this way enough.  What I think of is merely the daily American life; go to work, take care of the family, and play.  It’s very shortsighted and consequently, my attention is often misdirected.  Rather life is a fight against the flesh and our wills, the world, and the devil.  If we don’t specifically petition for God’s help to keep us from temptation and evil, then our silence is suggesting that we believe ourselves to be superior to these spiritual struggles or worse yet, we fail to acknowledge the actual existence of these realities.  I fall into both the former and the latter.  Yet everything Scripture teaches regarding our natures is the opposite–that we are in desperate need of the Spirit’s work.  The sixth petition, then, is a plea for help and a sober reminder of our weakness in this ongoing spiritual fight.  Our weakness in ourselves, while our strength is in the Spirit.  This is the essence of biblical prayer and the point of the sixth petition, realizing and proclaiming your desperate need for your Father in Christ by the Spirit’s work.

#128
Although it seems as if, “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever,” may not have been in some of the original manuscripts as a conclusion to the Lord’s Prayer, attributing this to God as a final statement in prayer is fitting and proper.  In this conclusion, we explicitly affirm:

• God is our King and we live under His reign.
• God is all-powerful and we live by His strength.
• God is all glorious and we live for His glory.

Attributing this threefold praise to God is a natural response to the six petitions the Lord’s Prayer teaches to its prayerful recipients.  When the Lord taught His disciples to pray this prayer, these three praises had already implicitly made their way into the six original requests.  With that in mind, this is a great way to conclude and provide summary to the petitions.

#129
More certain than the desires of my heart is the comforting fact that God hears my prayers.  No matter how much I may want something, what is more sure than those wants is God’s complete understanding and knowledge of those desires.  A God who hears me and knows me in Christ is the ultimate comfort.  As surely as He hears His Son, He hears me.  That little word “amen” attests to this.

We say “amen” because the Spirit’s work in prayer is a true work.  Hopefully, by the time we have gotten to the end of our pray, the Spirit has already so worked in our hearts that our wills have changed according to His.  In this way, praying “amen” is a way of acknowledging what is true of God’s will (and hopefully not our wills).  Though this is not always the case, and our prayers may often be wrong, the ongoing act of prayer will ultimately conform our wills to His.

Finally, “amen” is the first word Jacob has learned to pray.  I hope it’s the first of many words he uses in prayer.  I love saying “amen” with him after every prayer.

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Lord’s Day 52

Q & A 127

Q. What does the sixth request mean?
A. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” means,
By ourselves we are too weak to hold our own even for a moment.  And our sworn enemies—the devil, the world, and our own flesh—never stop attacking us.  And so, Lord, uphold us and make us strong with the strength of your Holy Spirit, so that we may not go down to defeat in this spiritual struggle, but may firmly resist our enemies until we finally win the complete victory.

Q & A 128

Q. What does your conclusion to this prayer mean?
A. “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever” means,
We have made all these requests of you because, as our all-powerful king, you not only want to, but are able to give us all that is good; and because your holy name, and not we ourselves, should receive all the praise, forever.

Q & A 129

Q. What does that little word “Amen” express?
A. “Amen” means,
This is sure to be! It is even more sure that God listens to my prayer, than that I really desire what I pray for.