The Lord’s Prayer and Our Own Are About More Than the Words

Bible Reading and Prayer

This is God’s word.

“Pray then like this. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:9-15)

This is the word of the Lord.

Okay, talk number two. Hopefully you feel refreshed. Let’s get into it together. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this wonderfully encouraging time of singing your praises together. And we ask now that as we come to your Word that you would calm our hearts that you would help us to understand and to go away changed through your Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer

Right ladies, keep the passage open in front of you. Okay. So now that we know what to guard against when we pray, Jesus goes on to teach us how to pray. Here in verses 9 to 15, Jesus gives us a model or a guide for our prayers.

But ladies, I wonder if you’ve spotted the irony. Jesus gave us this prayer to help us avoid hypocrisy and religious babbling. Yet, I think it’s fair to say that there is probably no other prayer that has been prayed more hypocritically or more religiously than the Lord’s Prayer.

Many people rattle it off without any understanding. They chant it like a mantra of empty words or they pray it with the utmost sincerity, but their lives do not reflect the Lord Jesus at all. Somehow we have taken this great gift from Jesus and dumped it full of hypocrisy and empty religion.

The early church reformer, Martin Luther, once said that the Lord’s prayer is the greatest martyr of all because everybody tortures and abuses it. But Jesus gave us this prayer so that we would know how to talk to our Father. And here’s the key. It’s not that Jesus wants us to parrot these exact words in exactly this order. Okay? I mean, we can pray it like that, but there’s something more important going on here. He doesn’t want a formula correctly said down to every last syllable. And then we go, there we go. Tick. I’ve prayed the Lord’s Prayer.

You see, this prayer does far more than teach us words. This prayer trains our hearts and turns our priorities right side up. Here in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is resetting the priorities for everyone who would call themselves a disciple of Jesus. Jesus is saying, “Look, whether you know it or not, this is what your heart should want most of all. People who follow me and who know my Father are defined by these priorities.”

At its heart, prayer is about enjoying a meaningful relationship with God, about depending on him, and about wanting what he wants.

So in this talk I want you to see that the Lord’s prayer is more than just a script to recite word for word. It is a pattern to live by. It’s more than just a script to recite word for word. It is a pattern to live by. JI Packer has put it like this: “Jesus is saying that prayer will be acceptable only when the thoughts, attitudes, and desires you express fit this pattern.”

So as we look at this prayer together now, I want us to allow the Lord to shape our hearts, our desires, and our priorities so that our conversations with him will be rich and deep.

Our Father

So according to Jesus here, how should we pray? Well, Jesus says that we should begin firstly by approaching God as we know him. So if you look at verse 9, God is described as our Father. Our Father. This means ladies that when we pray, we are talking to someone who loves us, who listens to us. and who actually invites us into a personal relationship with himself.

The original Aramaic word for Father is “abba” and in Jewish families it was a term of respectful intimacy. So it’s more respectful than daddy, right? But it’s a little bit more intimate than Father. So it’s closer to our word “dad.”

You see, the way we speak to someone depends on our relationship with them in and of ourselves. We have no right to address the God of the universe as our Father, as our dad. But you see, Jesus through his death and resurrection, Romans tells us, has given us the right to become children of God. And as God’s adopted children, we are now welcome to approach him as our Heavenly dad with affectionate intimacy.

You see ladies, God is not distant. He is personal and he wants a relationship with you. He wants you to know him as your dad. If you are not yet able to call the God of the universe your dad, then please come to him today.

You see, prayer is not a religious activity by which you can win God’s favor or try to impress him or anyone else. We saw that in our first talk. It is about knowing God personally as your dad through a relationship with Jesus.

Our Father In Heaven

And God, you see, he’s not just any Father. We’re told in verse 9 that he is our Father in Heaven. In Heaven. Heaven is the throne room of the universe. And the one who sits on the throne in heaven has power and authority over everything. The fact that our Father is in Heaven reminds us ladies that there is absolutely nothing he cannot do. And therefore, we can talk to our dad with confidence knowing that he can do exceedingly more than we could ever ask or imagine.

And so again, you don’t need to babble or try to persuade him of anything. You don’t need to be afraid of him. You don’t need to fear coming to him in prayer. Nor do you need to be discouraged by your circumstances as if they are too big for God. Your Heavenly dad loves you. He knows everything and he will work all things out for his glory and for your good.

Psalm 115 says that our God is in heaven and he does whatever pleases him. (Psalm 115:3)

In other words, he is working sovereignly in your life even today in all the mess or the heartache or the hurt to bring about his will, his good, perfect and pleasing will. So we can pray with confidence. Not with confidence in prayer. We don’t have confidence in our prayers. We have confidence in our sovereign, good, loving, all powerful dad. The one to whom we pray.

“In Heaven” also reminds us that God is not like us. He is not distant from us but he is separate to us. Unlike us, he is holy and perfect.

You might have had a terrible dad growing up. A dad who failed you, who didn’t listen, who didn’t understand, who was harsh. Our God is not like that. This Father in Heaven is all loving, all kind. He will never turn you away. He’s always there. He’s our dad who is perfect.

But he’s also holy. He is the king. And so we are to humble ourselves before him. We can pray with confidence, but we mustn’t be presumptuous. We can pour out our hearts to him, but we cannot tell him what to do. We must remember who we are talking to.

Ecclesiastes 5:2 says this, “Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth.” You see, he is our dad, but he is also the king. He is worthy of our respect. So, speak to him simply with confidence and with humility.

I recently read an article on prayer which summed up this opening line like this:

“Mature Christian prayer is having the boldness to walk into the presence of the sovereign God as if you were walking into your parents’ living room. It’s having the respect to know you shouldn’t lead with a whiny wish list and yet having the level of comfort to know it’s perfectly appropriate for you to begin with, “Good morning, dad.”

Our Father’s Priorities

So what should we be talking to our Heavenly dad about? What should our priorities be? And that’s what we’ll see next as we move down in the prayer. We’re given a list there of things, priorities that we should talk to God about. Let’s have a look at them.

Verse 9, we’re to talk to God about his name. “Hallowed be your name.” Can you see that there? Verse 10, when we pray, we’re to talk to God about his kingdom. “Your kingdom come.” And then again in verse verse 10, we’re to talk to him about his will. “Your will be done.”

You see, as disciples of Jesus, our top priority is actually not ourselves. It’s God, his name, his kingdom, and his will. This prayer radically reorientates the life of every disciple. It puts God back at the center. When I pray this prayer, I’m not asking God to serve my plans, right? I’m joining his. I’m joining his.

So, let’s consider each one. Let’s break them down and look at them individually.

Firstly, verse 9, hallowed be your name. It’s a strange little word that “hallowed.” We don’t talk like that anymore, really, do we? Well, the word hello essentially means sacred or holy or separate, right? And here in the Lord’s prayer, hallowed be your name means that we will want God’s name and therefore God himself- because in the Bible, God himself and his name, they are one thing, right – to be the most uniquely valued in all the world.

We must want more than anything else to see God worshiped and adored with reverence and with honor and respect by everyone everywhere.

And ladies, this is about more than using the Lord’s name in vain. We don’t want to do that, right? One of the ways we hallow his name and we keep his name holy is by using it in the right way. But it’s about more than that here. This isn’t some abstract prayer. You see, this has to change how we live now.

When we pray, “hallowed be your name,” we’re saying to God, “Lord, we want your name to be exalted. We want your kingly rule to be demonstrated in the world and in our lives every day. In our homes, in our families, at the office, we want our lives to count for you in this world.”

It means honoring God’s name in all aspects of our lives.

But what about verse 10? “Your kingdom come.” Well, to want God’s kingdom to come is to want the kingdoms and the powers and the authorities and the influences of this world to be replaced by God’s kingdom – the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, in one sense, God’s kingdom is already here, right? In the life of every Christian. Everyone who loves Jesus and who follows him is part of God’s kingdom. But there is also a future meaning to this. “Your kingdom come,” means that we long for this world to end and for Jesus to return and to usher in the new creation promised to us in God’s word.

Now just pause there for a moment. Ladies, Jesus is saying that the coming kingdom should be our priority. But so often we store up treasure in this world. We make the things of this world our priority even in our prayers. When have you last prayed for God to excite your heart, to set your gaze on the coming kingdom? When have you last had a conversation with someone who is not yet ready for the coming kingdom? You see, it changes everything, right?

To live for that kingdom changes how we live now. It changes how we think about our possessions, about our stuff, about our conversations with people, about the witness we are out in the world. Your kingdom come. Lord, help me to live today for what is to come. That’s where my gaze is: your kingdom come. Not my little kingdom. We love our little kingdom. We love that Lord. I want that house and I want to live there and I want that guy and I want… My kingdom. My kingdom. But God is saying we need to be more concerned with your kingdom come. And sometimes that means undoing the little kingdoms of my life. Your kingdom come. Do you live now in the light of that day?

Well, what about God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven? Verse 10. When we pray this, we are asking God to overthrow all opposition to his will. We are asking that his will should prevail everywhere in all things and at all times. And that all defiance of his will would come to an end at last.

Now ladies, when we pray that we can so easily rattle off the Lord’s prayer, right? “Your kingdom come, your will be done…” Just think about that for a minute. When did Jesus pray, “Your will be done.” Where was he? He was in Gethsemane, right? And he prayed, “Lord, take this cup from me, but if it’s not your will…”

You see, when Jesus prayed this prayer, it was right before he went to the cross. It was a prayer of utter self-denial. And the same must be true for us.

Listen ladies, if I pray these three lines, “hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, and your will be done,” then I’m crossing out myself and my self-will. I’m actually saying no to what I done. My will be undone. Lord, I’m saying no to what I want and I’m asking God to transform and to reshape my desires to be aligned to his will and to his desires.

Which means, ladies, that you can’t pray this prayer like rattle it off every morning and then go ahead and do what you want with your time, with your money, with your sexuality. No. To pray this prayer is choosing to trust that God’s ways are better than mine in my home, in my work, in my relationships. It’s to choose God’s way even when it’s hard, even when I don’t want to.

It’s an impossible prayer to pray unless Jesus has changed your heart and unless he rules your heart every single day. And it’s an exciting prayer to pray, right? Because praying like this will turn your life upside down or rather right side up. God hears our prayers. And so when you pray this prayer, he will work. He will change you and he will give you a new and a better set of priorities. You will begin to yearn for what’s to come. And you will lose your taste for the fleeting things of this world.

Isn’t it amazing to think that when we pray for what God wants, it’s better for us, right? It’s so much better for us to want what God wants because he knows what’s best for us and it works. When we do life God’s way, it works. Do you pray for what God wants? Think about your prayers over the past week. What occupied your prayers the most?

Our Needs

Well, the model prayer in the next couple of verses 11 to 13, addresses our needs – presenting our needs in prayer. So look at the next three requests. Verse 11, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Verse 12, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Verse 13, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”

If I were to ask you to name your top three needs as you sit here this morning, what would you say they are?

Well, here Jesus says that when we come to speak to God, our Heavenly dad, about our needs, we are to mention bread, debts, and temptations. In other words, we should be praying for God’s provision, for God’s forgiveness, and for God’s protection. God’s provision, God’s forgiveness, and God’s protection.

I wonder if those would be the things at the top of your speaking to God list. Well, again, let’s consider each of them. Verse 11, “give us today our daily bread.” Ladies, we need to pray for our father’s provision. You see, God wants us to come to him with our needs because he cares for us and he has the power to meet those needs. We must never think that our needs, whether they are physical or spiritual, are unimportant to God.

You know, sometimes I think we have this view of God that he’s like up there and so detached from what’s going on down here. But that’s not true. I hope you’ve seen that this morning. When Israel was freed by God from slavery in Egypt and they were wandering around in the wilderness, they cried out for food. And you remember the story? The Lord provided bread from heaven for them- manna, right?

Every day for 40 years, God provided for their every need. He didn’t grow tired of them. He didn’t sit there going, “When will Israel learn to bake bread?” No, he fed them. He took care of every need that they had. And he told them, “I will give you what you need for today and only for today. Don’t go gathering trying to save for yourselves.” You know, like the colored people with our butter cut. Don’t do that. Okay?

And then they went and did it. And God put mold all over their little savings that they kept because he wanted to teach them, “Listen, I am your God, your Father, your dad who loves you. I know what you need before you ask and I will provide. So trust me today for today. You may not get what you want, but I will give you enough for today.”

Ladies, I was so rebuked when I read this because I’m the coloured with the butter cut! Okay. “No, Lord, I’m going to hoard because who knows if it’s going to come tomorrow.” No, no. With all of our anxieties and our worries and our fears, we can trust God today that he will provide today what we need. Just what we need. Enough for today. And then guess what? He’ll do it tomorrow again and the next and the next. He’s your loving Heavenly dad who will provide what you need.

What about verse 12? “Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.” We need to recognize, ladies, that our greatest need actually is our Father’s forgiveness. As Christians, we are to daily confess our sins to him. God wants us to keep short accounts with him. Honest daily confession is the mark of a true disciple. Do you confess your sins every day? Do you talk to God and ask him to forgive you? He wants to.

But Jesus goes on in this same line and tells us what he expects of those who have experienced the Father’s forgiveness. What does he expect? Shout it out for me. If we have experienced God’s forgiveness, then we will forgive others. And he picks up on that again in verses 14 to 15, right? And he says, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:14-15)

Now, Jesus isn’t saying here that we can earn God’s forgiveness by forgiving others, right? It’s not what he’s saying. There’s only one way that we can ever be forgiven, and that is through the Lord Jesus Christ. But what he is saying is that if we truly understand what God has done for us in Christ, then we will become people who forgive.

So again, it’s not just rattling off a prayer – it’s been changed by the prayer. As I ask God to forgive me daily and I’m aware of my sin and the enormity of the cross and what Jesus did for me there, then I won’t hold other people’s sin against them. I’ve sinned against God. People are going to sin against me. But guess what? God’s not blind to that. It’s not our job to withhold forgiveness. It’s hard when people hurt us. It is really, really hard. It’s hard to forgive. But God sees it all. Nothing is hidden from him.

In Romans, we’re told that vengeance is the Lord’s. It’s not up to us. He’s not asking us to be forgiving people because “Ah, just let it go. It doesn’t matter.” We can do that because God sees and God will deal with what needs to be dealt with. So what do we do? Pray for your own sin because you’ve sinned and you’ve hurt others. Ask God to forgive you. And then if you’ve experienced that grace of God, extend it to others. Be a forgiving person.

Paul says in Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind and compassionate to one another. forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.

Well, what about verse 13? “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” We need to pray for our Father’s spiritual protection. You know, we like to be those do it on our own types. I’ve got this. Go about our day quite arrogantly actually, thinking that, you know, we’re the master of our own destiny. We can do it. We don’t stop to pause and ask God, “Lord, please, today I’m weak. I’m a sinner. And temptation waits there for me, and I need you, Lord, please to help me, when temptation comes knocking, to say no.”

We need our Father to guide us away from sin and to protect us from the influence of the devil. We have to ask God to help us, ladies, to believe that he knows what is best for us to trust his Word and to resist the devil’s lies because that’s what sin is, right?

So temptation is not a sin. Temptation we’ll face every day. That’s not the sin. The sin is giving into it. And we’re so good at saying to ourselves when we give into it Jesus doesn’t understand you know he was God. He doesn’t know what it’s like. But we’re told actually that Jesus did battle with Satan for 40 days in the desert being tempted. And he said no. And Hebrews tells us he was tempted in every way. Yet he did not give in. And guess what? Because that was his experience. He’s able to help us to stand; to stand up under temptation and to say no. He knows what it is like to face temptation.

And so we can pray knowing that our Heavenly Father understands. Our dad understands it all. And he can equip us to live our lives in a way where we believe that his ways are better than ours. Say no. Not on your own strength but on his strength.

A Prayer For All Of Life

So in every way as we read this prayer, it touches on all aspects of life. Right? There’s nothing left out here. The Christian life is a life of prayer to our Father, our dad who loves us, who hears, who sees, who knows all things before we ask him, who is able to equip us with everything we need to live our lives in a way that honours him.

Can you see this morning how this prayer is not just about saying the right words? I hope you can see that. It’s about asking God to shape the priorities of our lives and the attitudes of our hearts towards him so that we can live as fully committed disciples of Jesus.

So let me ask you as we end, what part of the Lord’s prayer do you need to start living out more intentionally today? Maybe just take a moment, a second or two to sit quietly, close your eyes, just think to yourself, what part of the Lord’s prayer do I need to start living out, believing, maybe for the first time properly, in my life today? And I’ll just give you a minute, a second or two to think about that.

Ladies, Jesus invites us into a daily rhythm of talking to our Father about the things that matter most to him. And as we do this, those things will begin to matter more to us, too. We will learn to love what God loves and to want what God wants, which, as I said, is far better for us anyway.

So, as we head into the week ahead, let me encourage you this morning to let this prayer guide your conversations with your Heavenly Father. You might want to in the week ahead just take each line and write some thoughts around that. Examine the motives of your heart as you do that. What matters more to me?

Let me work with line one of this prayer. My Father, do I really believe that he’s my Father? Do I really trust him as my Father in Heaven? Does it make a difference in how I think about God? Does it make me want to pray more because he’s just wonderful and I want to talk to him?

Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Do these things matter to me? Just take a take a couple of weeks to pray through each line rather than just rattle it off. Let it guide your conversations with your Heavenly Father. Let it shape how you treat others. Am I forgiving? Am I kind? Do I live each day knowing that because God’s forgiven me, I’m free actually not to hold on to my grudges and punish the people who’ve hurt me, but to forgive them in the Lord. How will that make a difference in your life?

Let this prayer shape how you plan your day. What matters to you? What do you spend your time on? Or what do you exhaust yourself doing? Is it stuff that will last for the kingdom to come? Does it matter for the world to come? Or is it stuff you can just go, why am I doing that? Just chuck! It’s worth asking, right? It’s worth letting God’s priorities…

So, this prayer, it’s like, you know, those big neon signposts that flash, you know, if something’s happening somewhere or their road works and it’s like stay in the left lane, it flashes a bright neon sign. That’s what this prayer is doing. It’s saying, look, this is what it means to live for the kingdom. Your prayers will tell you which kingdom you’re living for. Your prayers will tell you that. What you pray for most is what matters most to you in the world. Are these the things that matter to you? If not, why not? You can change today.

The more we live this prayer, ladies, the reality is the closer we will walk with the Father. And so, I hope you can see today that being a better pray-er is about understanding your Father better, about knowing him more deeply and letting him change you to want the things that he wants. Let’s pray together.

Father, again we are in awe of your Word, in awe of you. And we thank you so much that you have not left us to live to fend for ourselves in this world, but you’ve given us this guide, this yard stick by which we can check ourselves and be able to talk to you about the things that really matter. As we go into the week ahead, please won’t you help us to do just that in Jesus’ name. Amen.