The Lord’s Prayer is a Great Guide

The reality of prayer is that it is as important to spiritual life as breathe is to life. We ought to pray as we wake up and start the day. We pray to thank God, we pray when things are good and pray when things are challenging. We should pray before we take big decisions and pray even for the smallest matters.

As it says in Philippians 4:6 “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done“.  This passage tells us that worrying about anything is futile as worrying does not fix anything, rather prayer is the language of heaven.

One of the first prayers that children learn is The Lord’s prayer, but someone as we grow older we seem to forget about the place of the Lords prayer. We turn prayer into something that is hard to find time for and we tend to complicate it. Life gets more complicated, more challenging and filled with more needs and instead of relying on prayer to win in life, the average person seems to find less time to pray (or struggles on how to).

We do have a guide for how to pray using the Lord’s prayer (Matthew 6:9-13). Jesus taught his disciples how to pray using the Lord’s prayer and has promised us that our father in heaven knows what we need even before we ask God. Prayer is our way of taking hold of Gods promises for our life.

The Lord’s prayer is still relevant as a way to pray. As we mature we should go deeper and use the Lord’s prayer as a guide and insight into the way we ought to pray to God.

Understanding the Lord’s prayer –

9 “This, then, is how you should pray:

this honours the place of the father in heaven and understands that God is holy. We should come into God’s presence by honouring his name, worshiping him and giving him praise.

10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven.

this is inviting God to have his way in our lives and that God is the creator of heaven and earth, we know that God desires earth to be like heaven. We should acknowledge this and ask for God’s kingdom to come. 

11 Give us today our daily bread.

we are asking God to provide for us, God is the one who gives all good things. We are asking our father to give us what we need on a daily basis. We know that his mercies are new every morning and that God gives us exactly what we need when we need it. He does not give us yesterdays blessings, he gives us what we need to get through every day.

12 And forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.

we know that we fall short of his glory, we are not perfect and need to repent. We need to ask God to forgive us our sins. We know that if we want to be forgiven we need to also forgive those who offend us or have wronged us. Why should we expect forgiveness if we do not forgive others?

13 And lead us not into temptation
    but deliver us from the evil one

we are human beings and susceptible to falling, so we are praying for grace to avoid falling into temptations which makes us sin. We are asking for protection from evil and from the things that are waiting to trip us up.

For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

he alone deserves and gets our praise forever and ever. 

Amen.

We should not forget the Lord prayer – rather we should go deeper with each verse. Prayer has many parts and should be a mixture of worship, adoration, thanksgiving, repentance and requests.

For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen (2 Corinthians 1:20)

photo source: donotdepart, redeeminggod