THE LORD’S PRAYER – A PATTERN TO COPY

“This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven…” Matthew 6:9.

We have looked, first of all, at what prayer is not. It’s not about words or needs; it’s about awareness. Now we need to examine what prayer is.

As we are discovering, prayer is more about awareness than about asking. What we are asking comes into line with a greater awareness of God, who He is and what His focus, His heart and concerns are rather than ours.  Because it is natural for us to be absorbed with ourselves and our needs, it is necessary for us to have a pattern that shows us how God envisions prayer rather than what we think it is or should be.

Prayer is not unique to the Christian faith. It is an inborn need in every human being, no matter what god people believe in, worship, and serve. However, those who worship anything or anyone other than the true and living God are unsure of the attitude of that god towards them and do not know how to get his attention or how to please him. Our priority, therefore, is to identify who we are becoming aware of.

To train ourselves to become aware of God is not enough because “God” can be anything we have created for ourselves from our life experience, our environment, and the influence of other people. Since prayer is about changing our awareness, we must find out who this God is, not from our perspective but from what the Bible says. God is, first, our Father, our life-source, our Creator, the one who breathed His own life into us and to whom our spirits are fused by faith, through the Holy Spirit, so that we are one with Him. He is the one on whom we are dependant for life and everything that our life involves (2 Peter 1: 3ff).

He is the only true God, the one who described Himself as “gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and full of love and faithfulness, forgiving sin…” (Exodus 34:6) He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and not to be confused with any other god. Hebrews 11:6 – Those who come to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.

To address God as “Father” is to differentiate between Him and all other gods. Since we are His offspring, we are bound to Him by an unbreakable union. Our rebellion in Adam has broken our fellowship with the Father but not our connection with Him as His children. We cannot be “unborn” but we need to be “born again” into the realm where He reigns and where we have come back under submission to His rule.

To pray, “Our Father” is to become aware of the God in whom we live, and to whom we are fused by faith so that our lives are indissolubly joined to Him, our Source.