Let's talk about Jesus' Kingdom. Jesus is a king of a different kind of Kingdom. He is the king of a Kingdom overflowing with goodness and perfect peace. It's the only Kingdom story that will not end in tragedy.
Even when we pray for someone, and they're not healed, or when we pray for ourselves and don't get the promotion, or when we worship and don't feel God's presence, whatever it might be, something still happens. We should not forget that prayer is ultimately about connecting with God and having fellowship with him regularly. As we pray, we become changed.
The disciples saw this happen when they saw Jesus pray. It wasn't just miracles and healing and peace. They saw something different about Jesus and wanted to be more like him. When following Jesus and picking up all of his habits, the one practice that they wanted to learn was how to pray like him. Jesus responded to his disciples by teaching them a prayer Christians have been reciting and using as a model prayer ever since.
You might have noticed we ended The Lord's Prayer last week. Others might have seen an asterisk at the end of verse 13. You go-getters who noticed went to the bottom of your Bibles to find out what it meant. And at the bottom of your Bibles, most say something like, "Late manuscripts add 'For yours is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.'"
We're bringing this up because this part of the prayer did not appear in Matthew's earliest manuscripts. It's a footnote today. Translators of the Bibles we use are trying to be transparent and let us know only the later copies include this line. Is there a reason to panic? Take a breath; everything we've learned thus far is still valid. It's not a pin in a theological grenade.
This part of the prayer is about surrender. It's about wholly submitting to the Kingdom of God, to the power of God, and to God's glory. Praying this line in the prayer, what shows up as a footnote in many cases, is an opportunity to express to God we are giving him everything we have to offer.
All this brings us to the last word of the prayer. "Amen" is the word we typically use to end a prayer, but it's much more than a nice ending. It literally means: "Yes, I agree!" It's an empathetic way of voicing agreement. When we're praying for someone or something and declare amen, we're signing off with emphasis. There's power in amen. Let's c
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