Pray then like this:
‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.’” Matthew 6:9-13
In the quiet of the morning when I walked the beach before sunup under the watchful eyes of the stars, I meditated on this prayer of Christ. As I sat on the beach with the sun pouring down with a never ending view of the ocean in front of me, I pondered this prayer and fashioned my prayers after it. The simplicity and the magnificence of God’s Word in comparison to the creation I was witnessing made this passage even more profound.
I learned this prayer as a child long before I was even a Christian. Certainly a different time of life…an age of morality which included passages such as this for they spoke to the best of things…to the best of life. Not knowing God this prayer still gave comfort…interesting how the Spirit works using common grace and God’s word to bring comfort to a child…even an unbelieving child.
But even then I saw this as a prayer… “a model prayer”, if you will, of God teaching people how to pray and what to pray for. Through the years I have turned to Puritan prayers, to prayers of our fathers, to books on prayer to learn to pray properly… but through it all I kept coming back to this prayer…this prayer that is given to us twice in the New Testament (Important!) …given to us as a perfect pattern after which all prayer should be modeled. I was also reminded of the Westminster Shorter Catechism answer concerning the import of the “Lord’s Prayer”: WSC #99- “The whole Word of God is of use to direct us in prayer; but the special rule of direction is that form of prayer which Christ taught His disciples, commonly called The Lord’s Prayer.” Then there is Westminster Larger Catechism which speaks to how the prayer is to be used, WLC #186- “The Lord’s Prayer is not only for direction, as a pattern, according to which we are to make other prayers; but may also be used as a prayer, so that it be done with understanding, faith, reverence, and other graces necessary to the right performance of the duty of prayer.”
Praying Scripture enables us to know God’s will and with the 7 petitions found in this prayer we come away knowing God’s will and also knowing the things that we should remember to be praying about. This prayer in many ways summarizes all the other prayers of the Bible. It is very much filled with the Old Testament thus supporting the on-going responsibility we have to pray this prayer regularly…even and especially when we don’t know what to pray…this prayer has been provided for us to pray. Remember Jesus promised that when we couldn’t pray the Spirit would pray for us and when we didn’t have words to speak that the Spirit would provide words for us to say. Well, here is the Spirit of God giving Matthew and Luke the words we are to pray. Puritan Thomas Scott said this about praying the Lord’s Prayer regularly, “We are to pray with reverence, humility, seriousness, confidence in God, concern for His glory, love to mankind, submission, moderation in temporal things, and earnestness about spiritual things which it inculcates.” So it is our pattern for prayer as much as it is our prayer all by itself to be prayed back to God.
Over the course of the next few weeks…the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew and from Luke will be the subject of teaching and devotion, for it is the pattern of our prayers and it is the form our prayers should take. After all He expects that we will pray , “When you pray…” and He expects that we will pray like this:
“Pray then like this:
‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.’”
As I walked the beach or sat on the beach…God’s Word… The Lord’s Prayer…rushed through my mind and I couldn’t help but give thanks that it was the main thing on my mind. All things will be made brand new EXCEPT GOD’s WORD which will remain always the same!
God Bless.
In His Grip,
Pastor Mike
