The Lord’s Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13) is commonly recited in liturgical worship services. However, the Lord Jesus gave it to His people, not as a ritual prayer, but as a model on which to base their prayers. Although I have no objection to repeating the prayer (as I have done many times), Jesus specifically stated, “pray then like this.” In other words, use this as a template and pray your own prayer. This understanding is supported in Luke 11. The chapter opens with our Lord’s disciples observing His praying. When He finished, they asked, “Teach us to pray.” It is not readily obvious how the creature is able to approach the unseen Creator to address his needs and concerns. Nevertheless, Jesus makes it very clear that His people are invited to come into God’s presence and plead their cause. In Luke 18:1 Jesus “told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” He closed the parable with this assurance: “Will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? . . . He will give justice to them speedily” (vv. 7, 8). In John 15:7 Jesus taught, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” What a promise!

So, let us examine the model. It is basically divided into three sections. The first section honors God and provokes the need of the one praying to recognize and understand His superior and exalted status. Jesus introduced a powerful and glorious truth—the eternal God is our Father. It also elevates the importance of His will over everything.

The second section humbles the heart of the creature by acknowledging his utter dependence upon God for one’s physical needs, even life itself. Bread is the symbol what is needed to sustain life (John 6: 35, 51). Jesus is the Bread of Life—the source of one’s greatest need, life from spiritual death.

The third section extends the humbling to the greater need of the soul for forgiveness of sins, the need to escape temptation, and the deliverance from the evil one, Satan. The prayer ends in the AV with an affirmation that the kingdom, power, and glory belong to God. (Although the statement is absent in many early manuscripts, it appears very early in the first century in Christian liturgy. It is suggested the sentence comes from David: “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all” [1 Chronicles 29:11]).

Prayer is hard because it requires humbling since true praying is utter dependence on God for everything. Praying is difficult because narcissistic human nature exults in self-adoration, the pride of independence, and the rush of self-confidence. Much “praying” is but a request for divine assistance in the pursuit of one’s own life plan. However, only those who do the will of God will enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 7:21). Thus, the ones possessing this eternal life must and will focus on the priority of God’s kingdom over all personal desires by eager submission to His will. All godly beggars thankfully accept only a daily provision without worry or concern for tomorrow. These broken saints also bask in the wonder of God’s forgiveness and thus extend that mercy to all personal offenders. Lord, teach us to pray.