** This series of posts is designed to help Super Summer Students transition back into normal life after a glorious week. These posts should be helpful to any Christian wanting to grow and work through basic issues of Christian living. **
Matthew 6:9-13 (ESV)
9 Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
When we think of how to pray, our minds should quite quickly turn to how the Lord Jesus taught his disciples to pray. The goal here is not to repeat the words of Jesus without any understanding or heart behind them. Instead, the better goal would be to use the words of Jesus to teach us a set of categories for prayer.
Watch as we walk through the model prayer, and see if you might benefit from using this as a template for your own personal prayer time.
Open with worship
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name. (v9)
The opening lines of this prayer establish two things. First, the addressing of God as Father indicates that the one praying knows himself or herself to be in a relationship with God. If you are not saved, you just can’t pray this way.
Saying that God’s name is “hallowed” means that you are acknowledging his name as holy. The holiness of God is his being perfect, above us, separate from us because of how awesome and wonderful he is. Thus, the opening part of this prayer is worship or praise. The model prayer opens with the person praying and offering God praise.
If we are going to use this as a template, then, we should open our prayer with a time of praise. Spend a few minutes just praising God for his attributes. Talk about how God is holy, righteous, just, merciful, glorious, all-knowing, ever-present, all-powerful, etc. Use what the Bible has revealed to you about God to praise him. This is not about what he has done so much as it is about who he is. Praise God to open your prayer.
Pray for God’s will to be accomplished and the lost to be saved.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven. (10)
The next portion of the prayer is that God’s kingdom come. The kingdom of God is his rule and reign. As the parallel line indicates, the point is that God’s will be done here on earth as we know it is already being done in heaven. Thus, this section of the prayer is to pray that what God wants to happen actually happen.
Part of praying that God’s kingdom come is praying that the world and our own lives reflect what God has shown us he wants. Pray that you will obey him rightly. Pray that God will set right things that are wrong in your home, your town, or your nation. Pray that the world will begin to show more and more marks of God’s ownership.
Another way to look at God’s kingdom coming is to see it gaining ground through the salvation of the lost. Pray that lost people will be saved, entering God’s kingdom. Pray that God will save all his children and then send Jesus to return to earth and wrap up history.
This aspect of prayer has a global and eternal perspective. Make sure that you spend a few minutes simply asking God to do his will on earth and in your life just as his will is always accomplished in his throne room.
Pray for God to provide for your needs.
Give us this day our daily bread, (11)
In Jesus’ day, people did not tend to have cupboards and freezers full of food. They needed to work to get their food on a daily basis. Thus, this prayer for daily bread is a prayer that the basic needs of life be provided by God.
When you pray through this section of your prayer, ask God to meet your needs. Perhaps this will be financial help for your family. Perhaps it will be health. Perhaps it will be some other struggle that you and your family are going through that you need God to provide for. Pray asking God to meet your needs in the way that only he can.
Pray for forgiveness of sin.
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors. (12)
Even though our sin has been fully paid for by the blood of Jesus, we still sin and fail before our God. That sin can become a hindrance to our experiencing fullness of joy and fellowship with our God. Thus we still need to confess our sin and seek God’s forgiveness.
In this section of your prayer, spend time confessing the things in your life you know have displeased him. Perhaps it will be things you have done or thought. Perhaps it will be things you should have done or thought that you failed to accomplish. Perhaps you will confess that you failed in something and had no idea that you were failing until it was too late. Confess your sin to God, and ask him, because of Jesus, to forgive you that sin and restore you to fellowship with him. He will forgive his children and he will help to purify you from your sinfulness before him (1 John 1:9).
Note that in this section is also your expression of willingness to forgive others. Forgiveness of others is a hard topic that I cannot fully address here, but this one point is fair to make. If you know that you have been forgiven by God, you should have a desire in your heart to forgive others. Such forgiveness requires more than a solo action on your part, and thus you may not be able to fully accomplish the transaction of forgiveness, but you are required by God to be willing, before his throne, to offer forgiveness to those who have wronged you, even if you are not able to put yourself in a position to remove the consequences of what those others have done. Again, this is a huge topic. (For further thought on forgiveness, I recommend Chris Brauns. Unpacking Forgiveness: Biblical Answers for Complex Questions and Deep Wounds. Wheaton: Crossway, 2008. 240pp. $17.99.).
Pray for spiritual protection.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. (13)
The final aspect of Jesus’ model prayer is to pray that God will protect you as you go through life. The two aspects at work here are both internal and external dangers. Internally, we are often led astray by our own desires to temptation. Externally, there are myriad evils out there that would try to lead us astray or harm us. Simply put, Jesus instructs us to ask God to protect us from such things and lead us toward him.
So, as you wrap up your walk through this model prayer, pray about the areas of weakness you have inside. If you know something tempts you, lay it out before God’s throne before the day begins. Ask God to shield you. If you know that you are facing a dangerous circumstance or a difficult person, ask God to protect you. Put your trust in the Lord before you even take a step toward your day.
Conclusion
This model of praying is a great way to pray for a longer period of time than many of you currently do. If you set aside five minutes for each category, you will be praying for twenty-five minutes before you are finished. If you will think about each of these categories, five minutes worth of prayer material is probably not a stretch. Again, the point here is not time, but focus. If you use these categories, you have five things to pray about that Jesus himself told us to pray through.
I would encourage you to give praying through the model prayer a shot. Let me know how it works for you.
Pastor Travis Peterson 