Spiritual Disciplines預覽

Day 3 - The Discipline of Prayer

The prayer of a righteous man is a pleasure before Him. A sound of praise, an act of worship that brings joy to the Father. Through my prayer, I declare myself as being powerless and Him be the One who can do everything!

You might say: “I don’t know how to pray.” Prayer can be learnt! The disciples didn’t know either. They said: “Lord, please teach us how to pray.”

Jesus taught them how to pray.

From the first words of the prayer, the disciples could understand who we are to pray to. Our problem is that many times we forget in who's presence we are when we pray. We forget who we are talking to. Amazement is what is missing right from the start of our prayer and, unfortunately, takes too long to appear.

We can also see that the next three requests have God in the center of their attention and not us: “Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done.”

If our lives are not characterized by a burning desire for His name to be glorified, His Kingdom to come and His will to be done, then there’s no point in rushing into making all of our requests.

In the second part of the prayer, there are 3 requests that are, this time, about us. They are not related to me though, but to us: our daily bread, give it to us, forgive us, lead us not, deliver us. There’s isn’t such a thing as “give me”, only “give us”. This tells us that we have to learn how to pray for our neighbour as we pray for ourselves.

Basically, the structure of the Lord’s prayer (the first three requests talk about His Kingdom and the last 3 requests talk about us) is an exemplification of Jesus’ affirmation in verse 33 of the same chapter: “But seek first the kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

The end of the prayer still has God in the middle of the attention. It is about Him, about His Name, about His Kingdom, about His strength, and about His glory.

Amen!