What the Lord's Prayer Teaches Us About Prayer

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 ESV

The Lord's Prayer is a well-known and often recited prayer that comes directly from Jesus teaching the disciples how to pray. It appears during Jesus's Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 during which Jesus first teaches about the kingdom of heaven and the values of that kingdom.

At the beginning of Matthew 6, Jesus begins teaching about how we should not perform religious acts publicly so that others can take notice of us. He says this specifically about giving to the needy, prayer, and fasting. If we are doing these things publicly so that other people will see us and be impressed, then they are of no spiritual value. Instead, Jesus tells us to do these things in private, and our reward will be from God instead of from people.

So from the context surrounding the Lord's Prayer we learn the most important thing about prayer: prayer is not performative. If we do it right, no one should ever see how much or how little we pray. This is very good because it means that our prayers will never be motivated by vanity or pleasing other people. However, this can make consistently praying difficult when we do not have the encouragement of others. This is why we should sometimes pray with others in the context of prayer meetings or small groups. We should also have someone with whom we can be accountable that will check how we are doing with the discipline of prayer.

In addition to this important point, the Lord's Prayer demonstrates five things that Jesus wants us to do when praying.

1. Give glory to God

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.

The first line of the Lord's prayer is an address to the one that we are praying to. We are praying to God, but it acknowledges God as our Father who is ruling from heaven above. The second line calls God's name, in other words his identity, as hallowed, which means holy, revered, honored.

Jesus wants us to start our prayers acknowledging and praising the God that we pray to. We might start our prayers with an address of "Dear Lord" or "Dear God", which is fine, but we should also recognize and glorify God by his attributes. We can praise God for His holy name, His righteousness, His justice, His mercy, His love, His sovereignty, His authority, His power, and many more things beyond these. Giving glory to God in our prayers reminds us who it is that we are praying to.

2. Seek God's will

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

These next lines of the Lord's Prayer ask for God's kingdom and His will to be expanded on earth. God's kingdom is what Jesus also calls the kingdom of heaven, which is the church with Christ as it's king. Although the church is present on earth, and there are people here doing His will, it has not permeated throughout the whole earth and all people.

An important part of prayer is aligning our heart, our will, and our desires with God's heart, God's will, and God's desires. We should pray honestly for what we want, but we must also recognize that what God wants is always going to be much better for us than what we want. Jesus wants us to come to prayer in humility and recognition that God's will is best and with a desire for our own will to be shaped and aligned with God's will.

This is evident in how Jesus himself prays to the Father. In the Garden of Gethsemane just before Jesus is arrested and killed, he prays asking the Father to take the cup, a metaphor for suffering, away from him. However, Jesus ends his prayer saying that it should be the Father's will that comes to pass and not his own will. Jesus communicated to the Father his honest desires, but knew that the Father's will was the best way.

3. Seek God's provision

Give us this day our daily bread,

The next line of the Lord's Prayer asks God to give us bread for today. This is a reference to the manna that God provided to the Israelites in the wilderness after they left Egypt. They were instructed to gather only the manna that they needed to eat on that day, and any excess that was gathered went bad and spoiled by the next day. God wanted to teach them complete and total reliance on him.

Most of us are likely very far removed from a life in the wilderness where the only food available is what God provided for that day and that day alone. Nevertheless, we still must recognize that everything we have was ultimately provided by God. I am very blessed to have clean water, food in my fridge, a roof over my head, a car and gas to drive places, good health, and so much more. All of these things are our daily bread, and Jesus wants us to pray to God asking for these things.

It may seem very silly to ask for things that we already have. Why ask God for enough food for today if I already have enough food for today? The point is that we are acknowledging that it is God who has provided and will provide all these things. We have been deceived by the lie that we are in control of our own future, when that could not be further from the truth. Everything that we take for granted could be taken away in the blink of an eye and that is entirely outside of our control. God is gracious, so let us ask for the provisions that we need each and every day and give thanks to him for what he has provided.

4. Seek God's forgiveness

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

These next two lines of the Lord's Prayer ask God for forgiveness and confirm to him that we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. In the prayer, Jesus uses the language of debt and debtors, which is reminiscent of his parable of the unforgiving servant which he tells later in Matthew 18. This servant owes an astronomically large debt to his master, but the master has mercy and chooses to forgive the debt. Afterwards, the servant goes to find someone that owes him money and cruelly demands that he pay the debt. The lesson of the parable is that after being forgiven of our own immeasurable sin by God, it is unfitting to refuse to forgive those who may have sinned against us.

Jesus wants us to confess our sins to God and seek his forgiveness. It says in 1 John 1:9 that if we do this then we can trust that God will indeed forgive us. As Christians, we do not need to doubt or worry about whether we are truly forgiven. But even if we can trust that our sins truly have been forgiven, God still wants us to confess our sins to him in prayer and ask for that forgiveness from him.

God wants us to be constantly aware of how great of sinners we are. Although God's grace was free for us, Jesus still paid a great cost so that we could attain it. By recognizing the depth of our own sin, of which we have been forgiven, we will realize how foolish it is to refuse to forgive the sins that others have committed against us.

5. Seek God's guidance

And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.

This point is very similar to the second point, seek God's will. The difference is that the second point is regarding the things that happen outside of our control, while this point concerns the decisions that we choose to make. For example, seek God's will might relate to the condition of a sick relative, college acceptances, job offers, or the outcome of a political election. We may want to receive an acceptance from a specific college that we've applied to, but we acknowledge that ultimately it is God's will for whether we receive an acceptance or not. On the other hand, seek God's guidance might relate to whether we accept a job offer or which college we choose to go to out of those that have accepted us. These are decisions that we have to make.

Jesus wants us to seek God's guidance in the decisions that we make. Whether it is for small things or large things, our choices can lead us closer to or further away from God. When we pray for God's guidance in the choices that we make, we are asking for him to help us make the choices that lead us closer to him and do not lead us farther from him and towards sin. Most people do not hear God audibly speak to them, so how can God help us make these choices?

God helps us make these choices by aligning our desires with his own. The more we grow as Christians, the more our choices naturally bring us closer to God and away from sin. God has given Christians two things to help us grow in this way. The first is the Holy Spirit, who dwells within all believers and helps us to recognize what is godly and what is sinful. The second is God's word, the Bible, which teaches us about God's character and what he loves and hates. If we want God to guide our choices away from sin, then we must not neglect to spend time in His word.

In summary, those five points were:

1. Give glory to God
2. Seek God's will
3. Seek God's provision
4. Seek God's forgiveness
5. Seek God's guidance

And the most important point is that prayer is not performative, so prayer should never be motivated by the approval or affirmation of other people.

Remembering these points when we pray honors the way that Jesus teaches us to pray.