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    Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord's Prayer
    Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord's Prayer
    Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord's Prayer
    Ebook61 pages48 minutes

    Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord's Prayer

    By Rachel Starr Thomson

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    About this ebook

    Rediscover the world's best-known prayer ... and connect with God the Father in a powerful, personal way.

    Even for the most committed Christian, prayer--and the Bible--can feel dry and even meaningless.  

    We don't want to admit it. What would others think if we confessed that the Lord's Prayer, the world's most beloved and best-known prayer, taught by Jesus himself--leaves us empty? 

    And even more than that, we truly want to connect with God. It seems like this SHOULD be the way. But how do we break through years of "vain repetition" to make the connection we seek? 

    As deeply personal as this feeling is, it's not new--and it's not just you. Disconnection from God and his Word have been a human problem from the beginning. And it was just this disconnection Jesus came to break through, starting with a single word:

    "Father."

    With that one word, Jesus Christ ushered his disciples into a new relationship with their Creator. With a single prayer, he opened a door into the heart of God and called men and women to walk through it. 

    The Lord's Prayer is a prayer, a pattern, and an invitation, deeply layered and intensely personal, even as it transcends personal concerns and reaches for the kingdom. 

    In this highly engaging and personal work, Rachel Starr Thomson takes readers on a journey through the most powerful prayer of all time--straight to the heart of the Father.

    Rediscover the world's most renowned prayer--and this time, in a way that will change your own life. 

    Buy Heart to Heart: Meeting with God in the Lord's Prayer today!

    Life-Changing, Inspirational Christian Books: From the Author
    Hey, my name is Rachel Starr Thomson. I love Jesus and believe wholeheartedly in the power of words to change our lives. In my books and at my blog, Revelatory Creative, it is my desire to explore the kingdom of God through the Scriptures, through healthy Christian spirituality, and through connection with God's people around the world.

    Whoever you are, I believe in you. I believe your life has immeasurable worth. I believe you were personally handcrafted by a loving Creator with a vision and purpose for your life. I believe your struggles, your dreams, and your hurts matter. I believe you walk a path no one else does, one that is intended to benefit the world.

    This why I write. I want my readers to discover depths of truth about themselves, about the world, and about God that stretch and inspire them. 

    I hope you'll enjoy what you read and come back for more. Most of all, I hope that through my work, you'll forge a new depth of connection with the God who truly loves you.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLittle Dozen Press
    Release dateDec 11, 2015
    ISBN9780986597145
    Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord's Prayer
    Author

    Rachel Starr Thomson

    Rachel Starr Thomson is in love with Jesus and convinced the gospel will change the world. Rachel is a woman of many talents and even more interests: she’s a writer, editor, indie publisher, singer, speaker, Bible study teacher, and world traveler. The author of the Seventh World Trilogy, The Oneness Cycle, and many other books, she also tours North America and other parts of the world as a speaker and spoken-word artist with 1:11 Ministries. Adventures in the Kingdom launched in 2015 as a way to bring together Rachel’s explorations, in fiction and nonfiction, of what it means to live all of life in the kingdom of God. Rachel lives in the beautiful Niagara Region of southern Ontario, just down the river from the Falls. She drinks far too much coffee and tea, daydreams of visiting Florida all winter, and hikes the Bruce Trail when she gets a few minutes. A homeschool graduate from a highly creative and entrepreneurial family, she believes we’d all be much better off if we pitched our television sets out the nearest window. LIFE AND WORK (BRIEFLY) Rachel began writing on scrap paper sometime around grade 1. Her stories revolved around jungle animals and sometimes pirates (they were actual rats . . . she doesn’t remember if the pun was intended). Back then she also illustrated her own work, a habit she left behind with the scrap paper. Rachel’s first novel, a humorous romp called Theodore Pharris Saves the Universe, was written when she was 13, followed within a year by the more serious adventure story Reap the Whirlwind. Around that time, she had a life-changing encounter with God. The next several years were spent getting to know God, developing a new love for the Scriptures, and discovering a passion for ministry through working with a local ministry with international reach, Sommer Haven Ranch International. Although Rachel was raised in a strong Christian home, where discipleship was as much a part of homeschooling as academics, these years were pivotal in making her faith her own. At age 17, Rachel started writing again, this time penning the essays that became Letters to a Samuel Generation and Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord’s Prayer. In 2001, Rachel returned to fiction, writing what would become her bestselling novel and then a bestselling series–Worlds Unseen, book 1 of The Seventh World Trilogy. A classic fantasy adventure marked by Rachel’s lyrical style, Worlds Unseen encapsulates much of what makes Rachel’s writing unique: fantasy settings with one foot in the real world; adventure stories that explore depths of spiritual truth; and a knack for opening readers’ eyes anew to the beauty of their own world–and of themselves. In 2003, Rachel began freelance editing, a side job that soon blossomed into a full-time career. Four years later, in 2007, she co-founded Soli Deo Gloria Ballet with Carolyn Currey, an arts ministry that in 2015 would be renamed as 1:11 Ministries. To a team of dancers and singers, Rachel brought the power of words, writing and delivering original narrations, spoken-word poetry, and songs for over a dozen productions. The team has ministered coast-to-coast in Canada as well as in the United States and internationally. Rachel began publishing her own work under the auspices of Little Dozen Press in 2007, but it was in 2011, with the e-book revolution in full swing, that writing became a true priority again. Since that time Rachel has published many of her older never-published titles and written two new fiction series, The Oneness Cycle and The Prophet Trilogy. Over 30 of Rachel’s novels, short stories, and nonfiction works are now available in digital editions. Many are available in paperback as well, with more released regularly. The God she fell in love with as a teenager has remained the focus of Rachel’s life, work, and speaking.

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      Book preview

      Heart to Heart - Rachel Starr Thomson

      Before You Begin ...

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      Scripturally solid. Spiritually inspired.

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      Heart to Heart:

      Meeting With God in the Lord’s Prayer

      by Rachel Starr Thomson

      Introduction

      ––––––––

      Jesus’ followers once came to Him with this request: Lord, teach us to pray.

      He answered them with a seemingly simple prayer, an approach to God that combined worship, surrender, and the deepest petitions of the human heart, all in the context of a revolutionary relationship with the Father. It is a prayer that approaches the heart of God, for that is what Jesus wanted His followers to do.

      A few years ago I found myself making the same request, and there in Matthew’s gospel was my answer. I resisted it for a while. Praying by rote, I thought, was vain repetition—something Jesus spoke against. Besides, it was cheating.

      Nevertheless, stymied by Jesus’ very clear instruction (when you pray, say...), I laid my foolish notions down and began to do as He had said. I did not dream what riches were to be found by doing so. For the Lord’s Prayer is far more than rote or ritual. It is not a magic formula whereby we can manipulate God or better ourselves. Rather, it is the prayer of a Son who knew His Father well, and desired that we should know Him.

      Paul spoke to the church in Ephesus of the unsearchable riches of Christ. (Eph.3:8) Not least among those riches are the marvelous insights Jesus gives us into His Father’s heart. In the pride and delight of kinship, Jesus brings us before the throne and bids us know the Eternal One who would have us for His children. This book is my testimony to some of those riches: to the things I have learned about my Father and the profound joy and confidence to be found in them. I pray that it will bless you, and that the Spirit of Christ may catch you up to the heart of the One who gives life meaning and sanctity, fulfills our needs, promises a kingdom, and teaches us to call Him Father.

      Father!

      I would I were a child,

      That I might look, and laugh, and say, My Father!

      And follow Thee with running feet, or rather

      Be led thus through the wild.

      How I would hold thy hand!

      My glad eyes often to thy glory lifting,

      Which casts all beauteous shadows, ever shifting,

      Over this sea and land.

      If a dark thing came near,

      I would but creep within thy mantle’s folding,

      Shut my eyes close, thy hand yet faster holding,

      And so forget my fear.

      O soul, O soul, rejoice!

      Thou art God’s child indeed, for all thy sinning;

      A trembling child, yet his, and worth the winning

      With gentle eyes and voice.

      The words like echoes flow.

      They are too good; mine I can call them never...

      And yet He said it so;

      ’Twas He who taught our child-lips to say, Father!

      Father! I dare at length.

      My childhood, thy gift, all my claim in speaking;

      Sinful, yet hoping, I to Thee come, seeking

      Thy tenderness, my strength.

      - George MacDonald, from the poem I Would I Were a Child.

      * * *

      Chapter 1: Our Father...

      ––––––––

      Once, a very long time ago, there was a garden.

      Six days of uproarious joy created it. Out of darkness came a Voice, and then light, galaxies spinning, earth and water, wings and running feet—life. There was nothing, and then there was colour: green trees, blue seas, shimmering grey mists. And a garden.

      Then the One to whom the Voice belonged stooped down and made something with His hands. He formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Gen. 2:7)

      There was life before Adam, but the dust-man had something the other living creatures did not have. He was a living soul. Somehow

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