Rabbi Schneider - What Does The Lord's Prayer Mean

TOPICS: Forgiveness, Lord's Prayer, Prayer

Many people, listen, without knowing how to capture God's heart because they don't know who he is, and they don't know how he responds, and they don't know what pleases him, many people who are seeking after God in ignorance, and the result is that their spiritual life is operating at a very minimal level. So for example, we read Jesus telling the parable in the Bible about the talents he had given out. And then he finally called the man that he had given one talent to. And this individual that only received one talent came before Jesus. And Jesus said, okay, I gave you a talent and I left you to multiply that talent all these years. And now I've come back to you to see what you've done with the talent.

And remember what the man said to Jesus? He said, well listen, he said, Jesus, he said, you gave me a talent and I protected it. I hid it in the ground and buried it to be able to present to you when you came back and here it is. And Jesus said, you wicked and lazy slave, why did you do that? Why didn't you take what I gave you and do something with it, use it, multiply it, work it, invest it? And the man said, well I knew you, the man said to Jesus, to be a hard man. And the point is, is that this man suffered spiritual shipwreck, get it now, because he didn't know the heart of God. He didn't know how to capture God's heart. He had a wrong perception of who God is. And unless we know who God is, we can't capture his heart.

So by looking at the lives of the authors of Scripture and looking here at the Lord's Prayer of Jesus himself, we can learn who God is. And knowing who he is, beloved, we can walk with him in spirit and in truth. And in so doing, capture his heart. Remember Jesus said that the Father is looking for those, Jesus said, who will worship him in spirit and in truth; that God is looking to and fro across the earth looking for a person, looking for a man, a woman or a child that will capture his heart. His eyes run to and fro across the earth looking for somebody that loves him.

You see, you can capture God's heart. You have the ability, beloved one, listen one, to capture God's heart. And we do this through revelation, through the revelation of knowing who he is, and then by choosing to love him, and walking in obedience to the revelation that we have. And so we're then studying the lives of the New Testament writers, the Old Testament writers. We've already done the Old Testament writers. And now we're looking at the life of Jesus here. And we can learn of how to capture God's heart by examining how Jesus told us to pray.

Now again, I began here last week when we looked at the Lord's Prayer in Matthew, 6, and Jesus said, pray in this way. We all know the Lord's Prayer; Our Father that art in heaven, hallowed is thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And I'm going more quickly there because I covered that in last week's broadcast. I encourage you to get the entire series and you can listen to that complete teaching. We left off then where we're picking up today, where Jesus continued and he said, when you pray, say to the Lord, Father, forgive us our trespasses as we have forgiven those that have trespassed against us.

So I want you to hear my word here, beloved. If you want to capture God's heart, you can't be walking with the heart of unforgiveness. Jesus said, when you pray, pray in this way, and he told us to say to the Father, Father, forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those that have trespassed against us. So beloved, when I assume that many of you that are watching right now are watching because you love God, but yet how many of us that are watching today and listening to this broadcast because we do love God, how many of us are also, in addition to loving God, holding, get it now, a spirit of unforgiveness or offense against somebody in our heart.

You see, you're watching today, many of you, because you want to capture God's heart. And yet Jesus teaches here that if we hold on to unforgiveness and offense, we can't capture God's heart the way that we have the potential of doing. We can't move God and we can't see God move in power over our lives when we're holding on to unforgiveness. Because what it does is it hinders him through working in our lives. You see, we can hinder God through working in our lives. In other words, Jesus said, I stand at the door and knock. God wants to come in. But unless we open the door and receive him in, Jesus can't come in. In other words, he chooses to respect our will. And the same thing is true, beloved, you and I want to see God move in our life in power, and yet to the degree that we're holding onto bitterness, and unforgiveness, and ill will towards people, to that degree we're hindering Jesus from coming in and being able to fully move in and through our lives and to bless us.

I know right now, beloved ones, as I share this with you, that many of you are struggling even if it's in a small way, in your own consciousness, you're not aware of carrying a terrible spirit of unforgiveness. And yet if you would really search your heart and think about it, there are people in your life, many of you, that you have not forgiven. You're, you're holding some type of ill will against. You have a spirit of what I call an IOU spirit over somebody's life. In other words, there's somebody, beloved one, in your life that hurt you some way and you want them to be hurt back. You want to see them hurt. You want to have vengeance taken upon them because they hurt you.

In other words, you'll forgive them after they've paid for it. You're holding an IOU over their life. But Jesus said, when you pray, pray in this way, Father, forgive us our sins, get it now, even as we have forgiven those that have trespassed against us. Jesus even went on to say, for if we don't forgive those that have sinned against us, neither will our Heavenly Father forgive us. So I want to encourage you right now, search your heart, maybe it's a mom or a dad you're holding unforgiveness with. Maybe it's a friend that hurt you in the past. Maybe it's somebody at work. Maybe it's a neighbor. Maybe it's a relative. Maybe it's someone even from your childhood years, they did something to you. Maybe it was an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend. And you have a spirit of vengefulness towards this person. You want to see this person hurt. You have ill will towards them. Jesus said, we have to deal with that.

Now let me share with you a secret that I've learned as to how to deal with forgiving people. I've shared this on other broadcasts, but it's appropriate to share it here again with you. I have found that a great help for me in forgiving people is I look at Jesus on the cross and I see Jesus with his hands open wide, dying on the cross for our sins. And I see the people on the ground laughing at him and jeering at him, the ones that had spit at him, and pulled out his beard and his hair. And Jesus looks up to the Father as he is on the cross and he says to the Father, he says, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. In other words, Jesus saw them way, way below him. He saw them living in total ignorance and he said Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

So what I do with people in my life that have hurt me and that I have a difficult time forgiving because of the offense or the hurt, what I do is I focus my eyes on Jesus. And as I'm looking at Jesus, not at the people that hurt me, but as I'm looking at Jesus, I look at the people that hurt me at the same time out of my peripheral vision, in terms of my conscious awareness. My eyes are focused on Jesus in my mind, in my heart. And in my peripheral awareness I have a consciousness of the person that I need to forgive. And I, I model Jesus. I come into alignment with his heart and his words, and I say, Jesus, I forgive them.

You see, I see Jesus forgiving them. I focus on Jesus with his arms open wide on the cross, dying for the sin of the world. I see him forgiving them. And then as I keep my eyes open in him, on him, focused on him, I come into agreement with his heart and his words. And I say, Jesus, I forgive them. So I get into alignment with the flow of Jesus towards that person, not looking at the person first, but looking at Jesus first and keeping the person in the peripheral. And then I can release forgiveness. Because what I've found, beloved ones, is that if I don't keep my eye focused on Jesus and instead look at the person, I may fall back into a spirit of offense again, because I'm focusing on the person and how they hurt me. But when I keep my eye focused on Jesus, I'm able then to release the person with the same forgiveness that Jesus released to him when he's on the cross.

This is very important. We're talking about Capturing God's Heart. And if we're gonna fully capture the heart of God and receive the conscious experience of being forgiven to the degree that God wants us to experience it, we have to make a conscious decision, beloved, to forgive those that have sinned against us. Let's go back and continue on reading the rest of the Lord's Prayer now in Matthew, chapter 6. Matthew, chapter 6, Jesus continues and he says: Father, forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And then he continues and he says: And do not lead us into temptation, but, he said, deliver us from evil. Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

This is an awesome truth to realize; that we can ask the Lord to strengthen us by the Ruach HaKodesh, by the Holy Spirit, so that we wouldn't be led into temptation, that we wouldn't be yielding to temptation. Listen again: Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. In other words, we can ask God to protect us from being exposed to an evil that would overwhelm us. We can ask God to protect us from having to deal with an evil that we're maybe not at the present time strong enough to, to be able to successfully deal with because we're not mature enough, because we haven't had enough training, because we don't have enough revelation, because we're not strong enough in the spirit, because we don't have enough faith.

In other words, there are some things that you can deal with at the present time, but there might be some circumstances and some forces of darkness that you're not quite ready to deal with. You can actually ask the Lord to keep you from being exposed to those situations that will overwhelm you. Let's do that right now.

Father God, Jesus taught us to pray that you would lead us not into temptation and that you would deliver us from evil. So Father God, lead me not into temptation. Lord, protect me from being exposed to evils and to temptations that I wouldn't be able to successfully handle. And Father, I ask you to deliver me from evil. Deliver me from darkness. Deliver me from the power of evil. Thank you, Father God.

Jesus, beloved, is able to keep us from evil. He's able to keep us living in victory over the darkness. We say, hallelujah, praise your holy name.

Father God, thank you that you have given us a complete Savior; that Father God, in Jesus we have everything that we need to be overcomers, and successful, and victorious in life. Father God, again we ask you for what Jesus told us we should ask you for; that you would protect us in life, Father God, from situations that would overwhelm us or overcome us, that you would deliver us from evil, that you would lead us not into temptation, that Father, we continue to be followers of you fully engaged in loving you without any of our relationship with you, or intimacy with you, our commitment to you being broken, in Jesus's name.

Father God, right now I just speak over these that are watching right now. Father, I ask that you would strengthen them. Father, right now I speak over all these that are under the sound of my voice right now. Father God, I ask you to come upon them with a new, and a fresh, and a greater impartation of the Holy Spirit; Father, that you would strengthen them against evil; Father God, that you would protect them from the forces of darkness; Father God, that you would break off every scheme that the enemy, that the devil has planned against them; that you would deliver them from evil and lead them not into temptation. Satan, you have been bound under our feet 'cause we say King Jesus for thine is, as Jesus continues, for thine is, Jesus says, the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Notice what Jesus says here. He says, do not lead us into temptation, he taught us to pray, get it now, but deliver us from evil. Do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil. And then he continues to say for yours, he says to the Father, is the kingdom and the power and the glory both now and forever. In other words, Jesus is saying to the Father, Father God, yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory.

So your saints, Father God, belong to you. Don't let them be overtaken by the enemy. Don't let them bring a reproach upon you and your name, because yours is the kingdom, and yours is the power, and yours is the glory. Not Satan, but you, we glorify you, God. So be glorified in the lives of your saints. Let them not be overcome with evil. Let them not be led into temptation that your name would be glorified in their life; that Satan would not have anything to boast about; that Satan would not have an advantage by having anything to Lord over your people. For yours is the kingdom, Abba. Yours is the power, and yours is the glory. So Father God, keep your saints from entering into temptation and deliver them from evil. For yours is the kingdom, yours is the power, and yours is the glory both now and forever and forever, Amen, and Amen, and Amen.