Prayer was vital to Jesus’ life and ministry, and prayer was the one thing we have recorded that Jesus’ disciples asked Him how to do. They did not ask Him how to preach or how to perform miracles, but they asked how to pray. In Matthew 6, we see Jesus teaching a standard prayer model in His Sermon on the Mount. In Luke 11, Jesus gave the same model directly to His disciples. It does not matter which one happened first, but the “Lord’s Prayer” is the formal standard structure Jesus gave for how to pray. If you want a really in-depth study on this, look at Katie Erickson’s series on this topic, and I’ll focus on the highlights and emphasize what Jesus was targeting with each key statement, rather than just what it says and how we should apply it.
Jesus opened up with a plea to the Father who is in Heaven. It is an appeal to the intimate relationship within family bounds, but also an appeal to divine authority. As adopted children, we are called children of God, and God is not just Creator, but now our heavenly Father. We appeal to the Father as children coming to the loving arms of our daddy. But we ALSO come to Him in fear and awe and deep respect because He is in Heaven and He is the Creator and Judge and King over all things. We must learn that as children, God loves to love on us and give us everything we need, but we also must learn that God is sovereign and, as King and as Father, He will not give us just anything we want. Prayer is to begin in recognition that, as adopted children, we have a right to access the throne of God, but we must also acknowledge the solemnness of the throne.
“Hallowed be Thy name.” Jesus then calls for us to acknowledge the holiness of God. As I explained above, Jesus is saying that the Father is not a “sugar daddy” who spoils their kids with whatever they want, but that He is a Holy God and He is not like the rest of us. He does not think as we do and does not operate as we do. He is so far above and beyond us that we need to respect that.
“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.” In the first three statements of prayer, there is recognition of God’s high rule and authority and a reminder that He answers to no one. While He loves His children and will drop everything for them, He does everything with His kingdom in mind. This statement takes many forms, but the essence is this: God’s will is supreme, and our will is not even worthy of being called secondary to His. When we pray, our first priority is to seek the will of God, and that means one key thing: denial of self. We are not to go to God to try to get our will, our wishes, and our dreams. Our going to God is to seek His Kingdom and His glory and to bring that glory down here on earth.
“Give us our daily bread.” Jesus is reminding us that our sustenance is from the Lord and is sufficient for the day. We do not need to worry about tomorrow. God will make what we are given sustain us, and He will provide what we need. Yes, there are times He allows us to have above what we need, but there are also times He makes us go without. But we are not to be concerned about tomorrow, only now. An unexpected but appropriate application of this is how Richard Wurmbrand teaches those in prison not to try to endure 14 years of torture, but to only endure the minutes of torture we are going through and deal with tomorrow’s torture tomorrow. While at it, forget yesterday’s torture because it already happened. This was calling upon our daily bread… daily.
“Forgive our sins.” We all have sins to confess, but this also calls for us to forgive others. The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant is consistent with this. If we can’t forgive those who come to us in repentance, why should God forgive us? Do we not owe God so much more than anyone else does us? In this prayer, Jesus is telling us to ask God for what we will give others, and that’s a dangerous prayer for us to take seriously. A man will reap what he sows, and God will give us what we dish out. This prayer is to make us humble enough to realize and recognize that God is so far above and beyond us that we should never take His grace and mercy for granted, but instead, we should ask for the empowering grace to do what needs to be done.
“Lead us not into temptation.” God does not tempt anyone or give them the desire to sin against Him. The prayer that God would not lead us into temptation is so that God would give us the wisdom and the discernment to make good choices that will keep us from temptation. This is not a call for God to keep us away from any sort of trial or temptation, but that God would give us a path to walk that would protect us from such temptations. That said, evil will still find us. The point of this prayer is that anytime temptation does come our way, God will give us an escape route. Jesus wants us to pray to live a life that keeps us away from sin, and also that God would give us a way out. But that also requires the other prayers to be in practice, namely that God’s kingdom is priority and not our own. To see the escape and to avoid sin requires the active denial of self.
In all these statements, we see a pattern that God is to be the priority in all things and all areas of life. We are to pursue God first above any desire we have, and we are to desire God to the point where we want our desires to be His desires, and that God would even share His desires with us, knowing we would seek to fulfill them.
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