This past Sunday we talked quite a bit about living our lives within God's story rather than the myriad of other stories that press on us daily in our culture. I'll admit, this idea is a bit abstract. How can you tell if the dominant narrative in your life is the biblical one? As Christians most of us are not fully given over to a worldly narrative. We obviously believe the Bible and we try to read it and make sense of God's work in the world. And yet, these other stories are compelling. So, how do we ensure that we are consistently living as if God's story is the true and controlling narrative of the world and our lives?
The easy answer to this question is to consistently read the Bible and know the biblical story. That seems clear to us, but it isn't the only or even the primary way to immerse yourself into God's narrative. Our first point on Sunday was to pray yourself into God's story. We talked about this, but I want to go into a bit more detail about the necessity of praying in order to align your life with God's story.
You see, it's not enough to just read the Bible or study theology. For scriptural truths to lodge themselves in your soul, you must pray them and interact with God over them.
When Jesus taught His disciples to pray in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, He began the prayer with three requests directed toward God. These requests aren't just about worshiping God in praise and adoration. The first action for Jesus in prayer is to align our will with God's view of the world. We must think and feel rightly about God and His purposes. He is our Father in Heaven and we desire that His name would be hallowed and His will would be done. Notice the emphasis on desire. Praying engages our hearts and moves us from simply knowing God's story to wanting God's story to be our controlling narrative. This is where change begins to happen in us. Scot Mcknight put it like this, "In the Lord's Prayer our desires are reordered into the ways of God and the ways of the kingdom."
Practically, the best way to accomplish this in your life is to pray the Lord's Prayer daily. Rehearse this model prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 and begin to let God's purposes and plans become your desires. Your newly formed desires will lead you to want to know God's story and see it come to pass.