Written By Sheila Schuller Coleman
This last year, as I've been filling the role as the senior pastor of Crystal Cathedral Ministries, it has been a year of tremendous surprises. It's been much, much harder than I ever could have dreamed it would be. But of all the surprises that I encountered, the biggest surprise - and it was a surprise - was the depth of the love that God has placed in my heart for you - for you, the people. You, the people at home who watch on Hour of Power. Even though I don't know you, even though we may never meet, I have this tremendous, tremendous love for all of you.
We all know Art Linkletter. We miss him already. On his TV show, "Kids Say the Darndest Things," there was one little boy - a darling, sweet little boy named Kyle. Art said to him, "So, Kyle, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
Kyle said without hesitation, "I want to be a bus driver or a pilot."
Art said to him, "Well what are you going to say if you're a pilot and you're flying and all four engines suddenly go out?"
Kyle said, "Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name."
Today we're talking about the Lord's Prayer. I pray the Lord's Prayer every day because Jesus said this is how to pray. There are principles in praying the Lord's Prayer every day. And I pray it not word-for-word as it's written in Matthew, but I use it as a template.
In the beginning, it says, "Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name." We begin our prayers with PRAISE. We begin our prayers with a He-can-do-it attitude. When we begin our prayers with praise, we suddenly are praying positively. Our prayers become more positive.
You know it's tempting to grumble a lot in our praying. I know I was that way until I started praying this way a couple years ago. Many times, I'd whine, "Oh God, why do I have to do this? I whined and cried and said, "Help me!" However, I've learned that if we can discipline ourselves to begin with praising God, it changes the way we pray and it changes the way we live.
During our recent message series, "HA! Hallelujah Anyway!" some of you wrote to me and said, "Sheila I love that 'HA! Hallelujah Always!' Though it was actually "Hallelujah Anyway!" I think "Hallelujah Always!' works just as well. So, that's what praise is - praising God.
But I know that there are some of you who have a hard time praising God. Even the topic makes you feel uncomfortable because you have a hard time with it. Either it sounds boring, or it's just something difficult for you to do. I understand that. Let's look at how the Lord's Prayer starts out: "Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name."
When my children were small, I remember picking one of my sons, Chris, up from Sunday school one day. I said, "Chris what did you learn in Sunday school today?"
He said, "Mom, I learned that God's name is Harold."
I said, "Chris, it doesn't say that anywhere in the Bible."
He says, "Oh, yes it does. It says 'Our Father who art in heaven, Harold be Thy name.'"
There are many names for God in the Bible, but Harold is not one of them. Nevertheless, "Father" and "hallowed" are. Jesus used those words in His prayer when He taught us to pray: "Our Father...hallowed be Thy name."
I recently wrote a devotional for "Positive Minute." If you don't already receive these daily e-mails, you can subscribe online and you will get a positive devotional in your e-mail inbox every single day. Thousands of people subscribe. I wrote one for Father's Day, and it was entitled "Heavenly Father's Day." In it, I talked about my dad, and what a great dad he was. In response, I received an e-mail back from somebody who said, "Sheila, you talk about your father and what a great father he is. But my father was a monster. My father abused me. My father abandoned me."
I hear these stories. So many of you had challenges with your earthly fathers. You did not have a godly, earthly father. So when you come to something like praising, when you come to something like "Our Father who art in heaven," that's hard for you because it brings back memories, it brings back images that get in the way, and it's hard. How can you praise? How can you praise God, the Heavenly Father, when you had such a horrible earthly father?
What would be my response to this woman? I had to chew on that one. What could I say - that I had been blessed with an amazing godly, earthly father, and she had not? After praying, I said, "You're right, but you know what? It's my responsibility, then, to share my godly, earthly father with all of you who were not as blessed. To share him with you, to help use him, paint a portrait of what an earthly father is supposed to be. And, in so doing, maybe your image of God, your Heavenly Father, can be changed. Maybe that paradigm can be switched."
So today, I just want to share with you a little bit about what it was like to have this amazing godly, earthly father and what he taught me about my Heavenly Father.
When I was a little girl, every Sunday I loved to go and stand with Dad as he shook hands with everybody at the end of the service. He wore a robe like he does now. And, as a little girl, I thought I was being very clever. I would slip underneath his robe. All you could see were my little shoes and my little bobby socks. When people came to shake hands with Dad, I would stick my hand out right about where dad's tummy was, and they would giggle and they'd shake my hand and then they'd shake Dad's hand. We would do that all morning long, shake hands.
What I learned from that experience was that my father, my godly earthly father, who teaches me that my Heavenly Father is all-powerful, was a safe refuge to me. When I start to feel afraid, sometimes I imagine myself as a little girl covered in dad's robe, covered by my Heavenly Father. The Lord says, "I have you covered in My power. My dad my earthly father, is bigger than life. And our Heavenly Father is bigger than life. My dad would push doors open and all I had to do was walk behind him. He opened doors for me that it made it so much easier for me. All I had to do was walk behind him
This past year, I've heard God say to me so many times, "Sheila, I go ahead of you. Just walk behind Me; I'm pushing doors open for you. I'm pushing doors open for the Crystal Cathedral. All you have to do is hide behind Me, hide. I cover you because I am an all-powerful God. There is nothing too big, nothing too hard for Me to do."
One day, I'd had it. I was probably in 5th grade. I was fed up to here with my family, and so I packed my few belongings in a pillowcase, hid it under the bed, and I wrote a little note that said, "Dear Mom and Dad. I've had it; I'm running away from home. Don't take it personally. Love, Sheila." Then I hid it in one of the napkin rings. I thought that at dinner that night, when I was gone, they would find my runaway note in the napkin ring. We little kids, we think kind of weird sometimes.
I remember it was about three o'clock in the afternoon and I was contemplating where I was going to spend the night. I was thinking about the park. I had a little flashlight in this pillowcase of mine, along with a hairbrush, I think, and that was about it. I don't remember what I was going to eat or anything, but all of a sudden Dad came into my bedroom and he sat on the edge of my bed. "Sheila," he said, "where would a little girl go if she were to run away from home?"
"Oh...well," I said, "she'd probably run away to the park." I was so dismayed. He had obviously found my note before I'd had a chance to run away. Everything was spoiled. And here's my father with me, a prodigal daughter. I didn't even have a chance to run away from home.
God is all-perceptive. He knows everything. We think we can hide those little runaway notes in the middle of the napkin ring. We think we can hide things from Him, but it's good that He knows everything because He wants to step in between you and anything that will harm you. He will come in, then, and rescue you. And He's all-pardoning, like the prodigal father. He doesn't care; He just wants to welcome you home with arms that say, "I love you as you are, today."
When I was in junior high, we had to walk quite a distance from my junior high school to home. And back then there was no air conditioning and it was hot. I walked home with two girls who lived on our block; they were twins. There were two of them to one of me and, as we were walking home, we stopped in a little deli. One of the girls, as she was buying ice cream, said to me, "Sheila, don't you want to buy ice cream?"
I said, "Oh I can't. I don't have any money."
"You don't need money. You can slip that ice cream right there between your sweater and your notebook." I had never thought of that. I could? So I took the ice cream, I slid it right there between my sweater and my notebook, and I walked out of the store with it.
As we were walking home, that ice cream began to melt underneath the sweater. One twin said to me, "Sheila, aren't you going to eat your ice cream?"
I was feeling so guilty. I said, "No, doesn't sound good now."
"Oh, can I eat it?"
"Sure, you can have it."
I walked in the back door of our home and Mom happened to be facing that door. She said to me, "Sheila, what did you do that you should not have done?" I could never get away with anything, so that's part of the reason why I was kind of a good girl. So I spilled the beans immediately. Of course, the guilt had been building and building and I was eager to confess. I said, "Oh Mom, I stole an ice cream."
Later that afternoon I was in my bedroom, probably grounded, and the doorbell rang. I still remember looking peering around the corner of my bedroom doorway down the hallway to the front door, as dad went to the front door. At the door were the two girls, the twins. And they said, "Is Sheila here? Can we hang out with Sheila?"
Dad said, "No. And you can't hang out with Sheila anymore. You've not been a good influence on her." Do you know what I felt standing in that hallway hearing my dad say those words? Whew! What a huge relief! Those two girls - there were two of them to one of me - put peer pressure on me that was not good for me. My dad stood between me and something that would harm me. Our Father, your Heavenly Father, He's all-powerful. He's all-knowing. And He's all-protective. He's all-pardoning. That is who this God is that we pray to. That is who our Heavenly Father is.
When I was a freshman at college, I had a roommate who became depressed when a boy broke a date with her. It happened to be the middle of winter and my father happened to be at Hope College where I was attending. He was on the board of trustees at the time. And when I came back to my cottage, I was met by a resident adviser who said, "Sheila, I have terrible news. Sarah is in intensive care. She tried to take her own life. She tried to commit suicide. She's in a coma. We do not expect her to survive."
I remember those icy, slippery sidewalks, racing, running across the campus to where I knew my father was meeting. I knocked on the door and I said, "I need to see my dad. I need to see my dad." And out came my dad and we walked the snowy sidewalks together as we talked about what had happened to my roommate. He was there for me.
People, your Heavenly Father is all-pardoning. He loves you no matter what. He is always there for you. He is all-protective. He stands between you and anything that can harm you. So praise Him. Praise Him. Begin your prayers with a He-can-do-it attitude. Otherwise, we can pray "I can't do this." But, no, we can't but He can do it! He can do it. That's what we learn with the very beginning of the Lord's Prayer.
And I have learned to pray in all circumstances. Look at Paul, when he was thrown in prison and bound in chains. There they were at midnight, he and Silas - they were praising God and they were singing songs to Him when their chains broke free. It was the praising. Their chains broke, an earthquake rattled, and they were free, they were liberated. As a result, the jailer and his whole family came to know God and came to know Jesus. Praise, praise at all times. Praise in your prisons, praise even though you feel bound, praise even though you don't know how you're going to get through this. That's the time to praise. Praise heals; praise can break the chains. It's one thing to praise, but the more you pray it, soon you're living it, and you notice things.
This morning, I went out into our garden to get fresh basil for my omelet and I noticed a spider web. In the morning, the dew clung to it as the sunlight shined on it. I said, "Thank You, Lord. Look at this beautiful world that You have created!"
When I've walked across this campus during times when it's been especially hard, I've said, "Thank You, Lord, that there's not enough money because Your will will be done, because Your glory will be revealed!"
So, begin your day, begin your prayers, live your day praising God. Hallelujah always!
Lord, here we are, Your people, and we are here to praise You. Lord, You can do it. You will protect us. You will pardon us. You will always be there for us. And so, Lord, we Your children look to You, our beautiful, loving, powerful, Heavenly Father. And we say, Lord, thank You. We worship You. We bow down before You. We praise You. Amen.
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