3. Our Father
Jesus gives the Lord's Prayer either as an example or as a pattern for prayer. Both are valid. As a prayer, it falls into two: the first part about God himself, the second part is about ourselves.
This, then, is how you should pray:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Matthew 6: 9, 10 [NIV]
We need to go slowly as we pray this prayer.
We pray to our Father. No Jewish prayers began like that. As Christians, we can know God personally as our father. The word in Aramaic that Jesus would have used is Abba or daddy, the word used by a small child of their father. And notice that he is our Father. We belong together in his redeemed community, his family, the church.
Three petitions follow about God and his glory:
Firstly, may God's name be hallowed – may he be first in our affections and in our world.
Secondly, may his kingdom – his kingly rule – be established on Earth. This is a prayer for the spread of the gospel, for people to come to faith.
Thirdly, may his will be done on earth. We pray that God will change us, so we become more like his son, Jesus.
Only when we have first remembered the Father should we bring to his attention our own concerns.
The primary purpose of prayer is to bring us into such a life of communion with the Father that, by the power of the Spirit, we are increasingly conformed to the image of the Son. [Richard Foster]
Lord, thank you so much that you have adopted me as your child. Help me to glorify you in the life you have given me. Amen.
David Long
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