The Lord’s Prayer (Mathew 6:9-13)
God is our father full of love. His love is overflowing - love which was shown to humanity through his Son, Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is strengthening or preparing us to be able to receive His love.
Father is known by the son. Therefore, only The son can tell us how to contact or establish a relationship with His Father. The Son, Jesus, loved the world so much that He wanted to teach us the Pattern of Prayer:
- “Our Father in heaven” (v.9): The Praise
Prayer begins by acknowledging God as the one who is able to “do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think।” - “Hallowed be Your name” (v.): The Purpose
The motivation for prayer should be honour God’s name, not just for selfish reasons। We do not pray for our own glory but to His glory. - “Your Kingdom come & Your will be done” (v.10): The Priorities
Prayer is focussed firstly on God--His kingdom & his will। Our priorities is not to pray for “our kingdom” or “our will be done” but to pray that God’s kingdom (“righteousness, peace & joy in the Holy Spirit”) will become a reality in our lives, our families, our societies and our nations. - Our desire should be to pray for God’s will to be done in our lives। - “Give us” (vv.11-13): The Petitions
Prayer is also a time to present our personal petitions before God. God is interested in us and He wants to meet our personal needs:
(1) Physical needs: “daily bread” (v.11)
God wants to meet our material needs: He knows that we need to eat & drink. “Daily”: we need to pray daily.
(2) Emotional needs: “forgive us our sins” (v.12)
Someone says that Jesus’ psychology is the psychology of forgiveness. When we forgive others and experience God’s forgiveness, we are emotionally set free.
(3) Spiritual needs: “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one” (v.13)
Sin destroys our relationship with God. We need to pray that God will deliver us from temptations and from the devil who seeks to destroy us.