Untranslate
‘Give us today our daily bread.’ (Matthew 6:11, TNIV)
How often, in our minds, do we change ‘Give us today…’
to ‘Give me today…’
or, at best, ‘Give my family today…’?
What if we all stopped doing that? What if we untranslated the prayer, and prayed it as it was given to us? If each of us was praying, Give us today the things that we need, for our small groups, for our churches, for our neighbourhoods, for our communities? What if each of us prayed to Our Father instead of My Father?
What effect would that have on our thinking and our actions?
Photo: Jimee…
17 February 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: abundance,
prayer
This is a good prayer to pray (for yourself too)
A Franciscan Benediction
May God bless you with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that you may live deep within your heart
May God bless you with anger
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people
So that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace
May God bless you with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and
To turn their pain into Joy
And may God bless you with enough foolishness
To believe that you can make a difference in the world,
So that you can do what others claim cannot be done
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
Amen.
23 January 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: prayer,
quotes
A sort of prayer
Floyd and Sally McClung are approaching retirement age. Not too long ago Floyd gave up the pastorate of a pretty swish church in Missouri, USA to go live in a crummy South African township and teach local people how to plant and lead house churches.
I would give up everything if I could know how to do that AND I could do it with my family in a way that flowed from and was swimming in grace.
It is not about location or travel. I’m perfectly happy to be in North Wales forever. It is about love for ‘the least’. It is about throwing a banquet and inviting the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind instead of worrying about how good my seat is at the party I’ve been invited to.
I can see that I am selfish, critical, lazy and scared of people. I’m scared to talk to people about Jesus when I’m not performing on stage. I want to be rich and famous. But what I would rather want is to not care at all about those things. I would rather want to spend my life connecting the people that society doesn’t value with the life and kingdom of God.
To me the greatest gift in the world would be to be full of the love of Jesus and to spend the rest of my life with my family sharing that love with people that ‘don’t matter’.
Otherwise what is the point of my continuing to be a Christian?
4 June 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: community,
kingdom of god,
prayer
Justice
And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? —Luke 18:7-8, TNIV
What justice can I cry out for? What injustice do I see?
The insurance company that didn’t pay out for my claim?
The guy who jumped the queue at the petrol station?
The fact that Jesus hasn’t bought me an iPhone yet?
The greatest injustice that I can see in the world is a judgement that is not being enforced – God’s judgement that every person can experience his life because of Jesus’s death and resurrection.
It is unjust that I have a relationship with God, but my neighbours do not. It is unjust if I have found freedom from a life controlling problem through Christ and my friends have not. It is unjust if I am facing life enfolded in God’s grace while the people around me are living a lonely struggle. Anywhere that I am experiencing the life of God and someone else isn’t is deeply offensive to God and should be to me.
Let us cry out to God day and night that God would bring about this justice for us. Jesus says we will get justice, and quickly.
3 June 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: kingdom of god,
prayer
Speaking in tongues
From the always sharp and often brilliant Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus by Jon Birch
I stink at meditation. My brain is too busy. Imagine a ball pit in which all the balls are caffeine-addicted armadillos and hedgehogs. That’s my brain. I will quiet down when I am reading a good novel or watching a good film. Or when I am speaking in tongues.
When I speak in tongues my brain calms down, my mind opens up. If it has gone missing, peace returns to my insides. Most important, I am able to pay attention to my spiritual senses. I find that my best ideas and most effective solutions come to me during or after time spent praying in tongues.
I totally identity with what Paul wrote to the Corinthians: I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. (1 Corinthians 14:18, TNIV) I do it a lot. I need to do it a lot. I’ve been doing it a lot since I was 13.
Even if is is, as some people say, a bunch of gobbletygook – and I don’t for a second believe that – I would still keep doing it and I would recommend it. I am so grateful for this gift. It centres me. It helps me sort out life. It it a daily reminder to me that the spiritual world really is real and that God wants to bring his Life into human lives.
7 March 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: prayer
Frantic five minutes
I had to leave. It was time to go. The daughter would be getting out of school in less than 15 minutes and I couldn’t find the stupid car keys. Where were they?
Where were they?
There weren’t in there and they weren’t under there and they weren’t behind there and they were completely gone and had ceased to exist and I was gonna have to get a taxi or something and I’d be so so incredibly late and the teacher would give me that look again. And I’d feel ashamed. I am a rotten mother because I do not put my keys away properly in a place where I can find them and my children suffer because of it. There she would be, the 4 year old daughter, standing in the cold and not knowing if I would ever come. A stiff wind would blow to dry the tears that fell…
I said to God, “Father!”, I said, “Help me find the keys, please, I need to know where they are or there will be much suffering” (this is the extended version of what I said)
And in desperation I raised my hand to my head like a damsel in one of those old, silent movies… and the keys were in my hand.
Now. What have we learned today ?
22 February 2008 Christine Gill
tags: parenting,
prayer,
shame,
silly,
stories