What Is the Lord's Prayer?

What did Jesus mean when He gave us a prayer to pray?

Someone asks for the Lord's Prayer and usually means one of two things. Either they want the words, or they want to know what the words are doing.

Jesus gave it in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, right after He told His disciples how not to pray.

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

That is the frame around everything that follows. Prayer is not a performance. It is not a pile of words meant to wear God down. The Father already knows what you need before you say a word.

So why pray at all?

Jesus answers that question with the prayer itself.

Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

Everything starts here. Not a request. A relationship.

You are not approaching a stranger. You are not trying to get the attention of someone far off. You are speaking to a Father.

And the very first thing out of your mouth is not about you. It is about Him. Hallowed be thy name. Set apart. Honored. Treated as holy.

Before you ask God for anything, you say who He is.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

This is the second petition, and it is just as far from self-interest as the first.

Thy kingdom come. Not my comfort, not my plans. His reign, arriving in full.

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. In heaven, nothing resists God. Nothing argues with Him. Nothing delays Him. Jesus teaches us to ask that the same obedience that marks heaven would mark earth, starting with the one praying.

So far the prayer has asked for nothing you can hold in your hand. It asks that God be honored and that God's will be done. Only after that does it turn to you.

Give us this day our daily bread

Give us this day our daily bread.

Now it gets practical. Bread. Not wealth, not security for the next ten years. Bread for today.

This is a prayer for ordinary need, prayed by someone who trusts the Father to supply it one day at a time. Luke records the same request in slightly different words.

Give us day by day our daily bread.

Day by day. Not once, filed away, finished. A daily dependence that keeps you coming back to Him.

Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

This is the petition that costs something.

Jesus does not teach us to ask for forgiveness as a solo transaction between you and God, settled and done regardless of anyone else. He ties it to how you treat the people who owe you something. As we forgive our debtors.

Luke's version makes the same point with different words.

And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.

Sins. Debts. Same weight, named two ways. And in both versions the asking and the giving are bound together. You cannot pray this honestly while holding a grudge in the other hand.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

The prayer ends where every honest Christian life ends up: aware of how weak we are against temptation, and asking the Father to keep us out of it and pull us out of evil when it comes.

And then it ends the way it began. Not with you. With Him. Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.

Luke recorded a shorter form of this same prayer, given on a different occasion when a disciple asked Jesus to teach them to pray the way John taught his disciples.

And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.

Same Father. Same hallowing. Same kingdom and will. Shorter words, same shape. Jesus was not handing His disciples a script to recite once. He was handing them a pattern to pray by, more than one time, in more than one way.

What does the Lord's Prayer teach us about how to pray?

Start with who God is, not what you want.

Hallow His name before you name your need.

Ask for His kingdom and His will before you ask for your bread.

Ask for bread, plainly, trusting Him for today rather than hoarding for tomorrow.

Ask for forgiveness, and forgive, because the two cannot be pulled apart.

Ask to be kept from temptation and delivered from evil, because you cannot manage either one yourself.

And finish the same way you started. The kingdom, the power, and the glory belong to Him, not to you, for ever.

That is the prayer Jesus gave. Pray it as He meant it, not as a formula to repeat, but as a pattern for the words you bring to your Father today.