The Thin Places in the Lord’s Prayer
The Thin Places in the Lord’s Prayer.
“ The thin place is where the veil between this world and the next is so sheer that it is easy to step through.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way).
This term from an ancient Celtic tradition has stood the test of time. The idea of a thin place between heaven and earth has captured our imaginations, and yet is not just a metaphor. Thin places are literal as well.
The traditional thin place as the Irish understood it has been described in many ways: where the veil between heaven and earth is so thin as to be porous, permeable, practically transparent; where the space between the divine and the human has narrowed; where eternity and time intersect; where the boundary between heaven and earth has collapsed; where the wall between heaven and earth have made them indistinguishable; where the doors between heaven and earth have cracked open enough to walk through, if only temporarily; the place where eternity and time seem to join together.
Those descriptions of thin places have recently been expanded to include… wherever God has chosen to reveal Himself and make Himself known with unusual intimacy; wherever the sacred interaction with God’s presence is more pronounced and accessible; wherever the Holy Spirit is released in a particularly powerful way; a physical space where one can more directly and intensely experience God’s presence. A thin place is when the Spirit of God opens the skylight of the earth’s roof and provides easy access to and from heaven. A thin place allows traffic between heaven and earth.
“Bend (“natah”) your sky, Lord, and come down! Stretch out an opening in the heavens and descend! Lower the heavens to the earth, and step down to us! (Psalm 144:5, a song of David). “Tear open (“karata”) the heavens and come down! Rend the sky, splitting a hole in the heavens, and descend to us! Rip open the sky and burst forth from above! (Isaiah 64:1).
Fleshing Out a Thin Place. Jesus Christ certainly answered these earnest pleas for God’s personal presence on earth. David and Isaiah begged the Lord in heaven to tear open the sky and come down to earth. In His mercy, God surely did answer their heart-felt prayers by parting the sky and sending His Son to us. An invisible boundary between heaven and earth was broken asunder, and the Son of God descended to us on earth. God lowered the heavens, stepped out, and parted the veil. God ripped open the curtain and became Himself a Thin Place with skin on. Astoundingly, Jesus is asking each of His followers to extend His divine thin place through our union with Him on earth. He is inviting each of us to bring heaven to earth, helping to part the curtain and develop thin places on earth in his Name and through His Holy Spirit. Because of our mutual indwelling with Christ, each believer spiritually contains a thin place within. And God doesn’t want us to stop there, we are not to be content with our own personal thin place, but to instead extend our intimate presence of heaven throughout the earth.
The Our Father. If you want to learn to pray like I do, Jesus said, then the first thing you do is get on your knees and start praying. And then He offered a model prayer, a Jesus-approved pattern they could use. So Jesus gave them an outline of what is important to include in their prayers. These are the words and thoughts that are the fundamentals if you want to pray like Me, if you want to live into My way of life, He said.
“Our dear heavenly Father,
May your holy and sacred Name be honored here on earth;
Come now and begin your Kingdom reign;
May your perfect will be done here on earth exactly as it is done in heaven;
Provide for us in our continual need for daily bread;
Forgive us when we have done wrong,
As we release forgiveness to those who have wronged us;
Keep us from tempting situations,
And protect us from the Evil One. AMEN!
[The “Lord’s Prayer” closes in many churches with the triumphant acknowledgement of the Father’s glorious and eternal power… “For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.” This thought is consistent with gospel truth, but it actually isn’t in Scripture, and was added by the early church later on. In both renditions of the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4), Jesus closed with “Deliver us from the Evil One.”]
Parting the Heavens and Coming Down to Earth. One can see here the emphasis Jesus placed on bringing heaven to earth, on breaking through the boundaries and developing God’s Kingdom, expanding pockets of thin places on earth. God wants to tear open the heavens and redeem the earth with His intimate presence and divine power.
Our. Fleshing out the heavenly reality of community means we learn to live into a plural life with others here on earth. As in heaven, God’s people here share His love by caring for “one another,” by enjoying a life together as siblings within God’s family. Heaven comes to earth when we develop a lifestyle of replacing every “my, me, mine” with “our, we, us.” Within God’s household here on earth, faith is a group project.
Abba. In heaven, God is a dear Papa. The citizens of heaven are literally one big, happy family and thrive under the leadership and protection of the Father. His Name is revered in heaven, it is honored and worshipped and held in awe. Wherever this is duplicated on earth, His Kingdom has come. Wherever the sacred and holy Name of God is magnified on earth, the heavens have parted through a thin place and found a place to dwell on earth.
Obedience. Heaven is under the loving rule of our Father King, where He is obeyed and His perfect will is followed. If we know what’s good for us here on earth, His every wish will be our command. As the angels obey God in heaven, His followers obey here on earth… with gladness, with singleness of heart, without hesitation, quickly, without question, completely and faithfully. We will know when an opening in heaven has been stretched out and the Spirit of God has descended, when we place our confident trust in the Father like the angels in heaven, when we do not hesitate to do God’s will here on earth like the angels above who surround His throne in heaven. As in heaven, as in here on earth, it is our privilege to serve the righteous King.
Forgiveness. Heaven is a refuge of forgiveness, and thrives in a state of perpetual forgiveness. Grace so completely fills the atmosphere of heaven that there is no opportunity to nurse a grudge, no room for bitterness, no inclination to keep a score of wrongs, and there is no oxygen to fuel the desire for revenge. After crashing through a thin place, the first domino to fall in establishing heaven on earth is unforgiveness, the unmerciful heart. Unforgiveness creates hell on earth, while the spirit of forgiveness creates heaven on earth. Forgiveness is love distilled, and the most basic characteristic of the character of God. On earth, to forgive is divine and reveals an opening in the sky so heaven has able to descend to us. As Jesus seems to suggest in His prayer here, forgiveness is a divine process, whereby forgiveness of others is how we live into God’s forgiveness of us.
Times of Testing. The loving Father certainly doesn’t tempt us to do wrong, but in His mercy He does in fact allow temptation to rear its ugly head in our lives. As it turns out, these times of testing can be used to strengthen our resolve, or holy stubbornness, to develop a pattern of resistance to temptation. In heaven there are no tempting situations, so heaven on earth uncovers our spiritual siblings who help us in those difficult times of testing. In a heavenly community on earth, our brothers and sisters in the faith come alongside us to keep us from going stray, they help remove anything that would entice us to fall. Heaven has surely come to earth when we have developed patterns to resist evil, not flirt with it. “We can’t help it when birds fly over our heads, but we certainly can keep them from building nests in our hair.” (Luther). In heaven on earth, we continue to grow in our redeemed inclination to resist evil.
Deliverance. Satan has no power in heaven. He was the ultimate Rebel and has been defeated in the heavenly realms. But God has allowed the Evil One to harass us here on earth. We can’t pretend the devil is not real in the earthly realm, but we can live in the reality of the devil’s defeat. Because of the Cross and the Empty tomb, the spiritual battle has been won. So as we put on Christ’s victory clothes, and the spiritual armor of God (Eph. 6), and as we do His will on earth as it is done in heaven, we are spiritually protected in those thin places in which Satan is temporarily free to roam. For God has already torn the veil, He has parted the curtain, and in His presence on earth we are assured that He will remain our rescuer, deliverer, savior, and spiritual lifeguard.
“From the moment John (the Baptist) stepped into the scene until now, the realm of heaven’s Kingdom is bursting forth, and passionate people have taken hold of its power (TPT);” “The kingdom of heaven is entered into by force, and violent ones take hold of it by force” (ESV); “… and the violent bear it away” (DRC Bible). (Matt. 11:12).
Passion. Bible scholars have offered varying ways to understand these words of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew, but I favor the view that the “violent ones” are in fact those zealous followers of God who seek to advance the Kingdom with a lot of passion, and are seizing the earth by storm in their desire to welcome heaven’s presence on earth. The “violent ones” are not literally violent, but are those praiseworthy believers who have an enthusiastic eagerness to bring heaven to earth and spread God’s Kingdom. This meaning makes sense to me in light of Isaiah 64:1, where we find a plea for God to ”tear open” the heavens, to rip open the sky and burst forth from heaven. Isaiah is providing an image of ripping something apart, of splitting the sky forcefully, and maybe even in a picture of violence. This brings to mind the rather forceful tearing apart of a rooftop by some faithful friends in order to enable their lame friend to come close to Jesus for his healing and salvation (Mark 2:1-12). Perhaps we are to imitate these zealous believers as we rip apart the thin place separating the earth from heaven. Perhaps we should follow God’s example from heaven, and help to bring heaven to earth with passion and zeal.
Matt Maher, TAYA – The Lord’s Prayer (It’s Yours) (Official Music Video) (youtube.com)