Teach Us To Pray

God is clearly adjusting my life-view by a fresh study I have taken up on Jesus’ instructions on prayer. God has begun to change even the words I choose to use when I pray. He is using a certain pattern based on the model prayer Jesus gave His disciples to bring a welcome and long overdue revival to my prayer life. As I have prayed in this way, I am beginning to see my values and expectations begin to make a marked journey away from self-centeredness and earthy limitations to a pronounced God-centeredness and a refreshing heavenly-mindedness.

I have begun to share this with a number of folks lately – both one-on-one and in teaching venues like our Wednesday night prayer services. I want to include them here for all of you, to remind some of you, to inform most of you, but to help all of us grow in our prayer life. Consider the familiar beginning of Jesus’ teaching on prayer in Matthew 6:9-10.

⁹ Therefore, you should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, Your name be honored as holy. ¹⁰ Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:9-10, HCSB).

Notice some key words and phrases and the grammatical construction of Jesus’ first instruction on how we should pray.

Therefore … Remember, whenever you find “therefore” in Scripture, always ask what’s the “therefore” there for? In this case, Jesus makes a point of distinction between the prayers of hypocrites and the prayer life of His disciples. A hypocrite is essentially someone who acts contrary to their nature. It is contrary to the nature of fallen man, even religious fallen man, either to practice righteousness (6:1) or to pray without a deadly over-attention to self and lack of regard for God. So, the hypocrites pray in such a way as possibly to impress God but definitely to impress people. Their public religious displays betray their lack of private substantive interaction with God or reflection on their own state. Jesus declares forthrightly, “Don’t be like them!” (Matthew 6:8). We should not be the object of our own prayers, neither should other people be, but God and God alone!

Since we are not to pray like hypocrites pray, how then should we pray? Jesus says, “You should pray like this.” We tend to glance over this statement, and in so doing, miss a critical reality. This model prayer states God’s expectations for our prayers. He listens to hear these sentiments pressing on our hearts and bursting through to the praise of His glory. If we do not know these instructions are Almighty God’s firm expectations, we cannot help but to trivialize and reduce this prayer to merely a nice passage to memorize or certain words we must religiously repeat. We miss the point altogether.

Our Father in heaven ... The prime distinction between our prayers and those of hypocrites is in the nature of our relationship with God. He is available to us – like a father to his children – yet He is “in heaven” – holy and other than us. This terrible chasm is bridged in the person of our Mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our prayers find their origin in our connection with Father through Christ. We can come to the Father only through the Son (John 14:6). Our prayers flow from a spring derived from our humility, our abandonment of our own goodness or worthiness, and our absolute dependence upon our High Priest.

This dependence, however, is no longer desperate but certain. “We have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10:19). Hooray! and Hallelujah! We “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith … [we] hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering” (Hebrews 10:22-23). We find our legs and stand in the congregation of the righteous comforted and encouraged by the provision made that we actually belong in that company.

When we pray, then, we should begin by celebrating all that Jesus Christ has afforded us by His grace. We are now free and forgiven, adopted as heirs, yea, joint-heirs with Christ. We are, by virtue of no goodness on our part but totally by the grace and mercy of God, now the sons and daughters of God! He is “Our Father in heaven!” Hallelujah!

On earth as it is in heaven … At first blush, the three phrases that follow our appeal to Father each begin with a verb (aorist imperative) and suggest the intention on Jesus’ part of a strong parallelism. These are not three separate requests independent of one another. These are three variations of a single theme. We may see the connection more clearly by this literal translation from the original language:

• Let be honored, or let be hallowed the name of You;
• Let come the kingdom of You;
• Let be done the will of You.

Then, a phrase clarifies what the fulfillment of these three requests should look like: as in heaven also on earth. So, I read them as follows:

• Let be honored or hallowed the name of You as in heaven also on earth;
• Let come the kingdom of You as in heaven also on earth;
• Let be done the will of You as in heaven also on earth.

This provokes some important questions and powerful implications. How is Father’s name honored in heaven? How is Father’s reign manifest in heaven? How is Father’s will done in heaven? How can our experiences here reflect heaven?

O, Lord, teach us to pray and practice righteousness as in heaven also on earth!

Pastor Rob