Archives For Lord’s prayer

How to Pray When God Doesn’t Seem To Care

smgianotti@me.com  —  May 15, 2018

Sometimes mom said “no,” but that never stopped me from asking. If I didn’t smell chocolate chip cookies as soon as I opened our front door after school, I’d request a snack. Sometimes she made me wait for dinner, but not always, so every day I asked. I had a confidence in my mom that I often lack with God.

For years, I questioned the value of praying for a husband, since I knew singleness could be part of God sovereign plan. Sometimes I doubt whether he cares about things like a tight budget. I find it hard to ask him to heal my sister-in-law’s multiple sclerosis, since a “no” pushes me into the dark place of suffering.

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Photo by Asdrubal luna on Unsplash


I hear other Christians share similar obstacles. If God cares more about eternal things, like people dying and going to hell, they wonder whether he really cares about finding them a new job. If God is sovereign, he’ll do what he wants, so why bother asking for another child. If they ask God to heal their mom, but she still dies, they struggle with feeling abandoned by him Continue Reading…

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2 Things I Never Saw in the Lord’s Prayer: Part 1

smgianotti@me.com  —  May 8, 2018

A stranger’s fingers grip mine. The words reverberate from my throat and into my ears. Liturgy is new for me–but stepping into the same words every Sunday works like a garden hoe on my heart. After weeks and months of hands grasping mine as we pray together, “Our Father in heaven,” two realizations have churned up from this regular tilling of the Lord’s Prayer.

Even though I grew up in nonliturgical churches, like many Christians, I memorized the Lord’s prayer. I could say it in my sleep, and when I started attending my husband’s church last fall, the words tumbled out of my mouth, often on autopilot. 

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Photo by Diana Simumpande on Unsplash, edited

In the months since, I’ve stubbed my spiritual toes on two truths about the Lord’s prayer, so large I’m shocked I never saw them before. (I’ll stick to tackling the first one here). In both cases, my blindness stemmed, in part, from treating the Lord’s prayer like a newspaper clipping. I learned it out of context and never asked how the surrounding paragraphs should shape my understanding of what Jesus intended to teach with this string of phrases.

Continue Reading…

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