The Lord's PrayerSample

Preliminaries 

This, then, is how you should pray . . .

Imagine that you are a pianist or guitarist struggling to learn a piece of music that seems to make impossible demands on your technique. Now imagine that the composer suddenly appears and stands beside you. "This," they tell you gently, "is how you put your hands at this point . . . that is how you play that phrase," and you are shown exactly where and when to put your fingers. How grateful you would be for such coaching! If music isn’t your thing then imagine something similar in sport, rock climbing, public speaking, or even driving a car. Guidance that is based on total knowledge, complete authority and unlimited patience.

Here in the Lord’s Prayer we have in about 70 words – close to the current tweet length of 280 characters – guidance by Jesus himself on how we talk to God. This is teaching about the most important subject in the world, by the man who knew most about it. That’s why the Lord’s Prayer is worth taking seriously. 

And prayer is important! For a lot of people prayer is rather like the emergency services number on their phone; when in trouble or difficulty they call God. Well, in his grace God does help us under such circumstances but it’s not the only thing that prayer is for. As we will see in this course, prayer helps us put ourselves in a right relationship with God and in doing so places both us and our problems in perspective. We have probably all had the experience of knowing someone for some time, perhaps a co-worker or a neighbour, but of only feeling that we know them properly after we have had a decent conversation. Prayer is like that: it brings us close to God, it allies us with him so that we are involved in his purposes and it makes his priorities ours. 

Although many people recite the Lord’s Prayer word for word, I don’t believe it was intended to be used that way. Rather, I see it as a pattern prayer, a framework or template for how we are to pray. Perhaps the best way to think of it is as an outline; a structured series of headings to guide us as we talk with God. 

Effective prayer deepens our relationship with God. It builds bonds with God that will last. It lays foundations in the light that we may need when it’s dark. I cannot overemphasize the importance of prayer. If you want to undergo a spiritual check-up then only one test is needed: it is to ask yourself, "How good is my prayer life?" In terms of what we do and what we are, prayer is the great limiting factor; no Christian achieves more than their prayer life allows.