Praying the Lord's Prayer

Recently a friend asked me to pray for them. I agreed, but later was not sure what to ask God for on their behalf. I did not think that what they had asked me to pray for was in keeping with God’s teaching for our lives. So I asked God to do what He already knows is best for them and left my prayer there.

While I pondered how to pray for my friend, I heard a pastor we were visiting mention a part of the Lord’s Prayer (or The Our Father). And then it all clicked.

Unfortunately, because most of us were encouraged to memorize the Lord’s Prayer when we were children, and because many of us recite some form of that prayer every week in church, it has lost, or perhaps never had, its meaning for us. We say it by rote and Christ’s teaching when he gave this to his disciples is lost on us.

You will remember that one of the disciples had asked Jesus to teach them to pray and he responded “This, then, is how you should pray…” (Matthew 6 also Luke 11) and he gave them the outline of what we have come to call “The Lord’s Prayer”.

As I repeated the prayer in my head, I suddenly saw that this is a pattern that we can pray, not only for ourselves, but also for others. I have been “praying the Lord’s Prayer“ for my friends and family ever since.

I begin by acknowledging who God is – my Father, the Holy One – and asking that my grandchildren, my children, my friends, and Bill and I see God in all that He desires for us to see this day.

Then I ask that His will be done in my grandchildren’s, my children’s, my friends, and Bill’s and my life this day as His will is done in heaven. That would almost seem enough to pray…but Christ went on.

I ask that God will supply everyone’s needs (bread) this day. I ask that we will ever continue to learn to forgive and to be forgiven. I ask that God Himself will protect all of us from “The Evil One” in all the ways that we will need to be protected this day.

And finally I ask that God be given the glory and the honor and the power in all of our lives this day. That each and all I pray for will see His glory and honor and power at work in their lives.

I still talk to God about some very specific things in the lives of those I pray for, but I have not told God what to do for a very long time – I realized that audacity of that a number of years ago. I know, I KNOW, that He knows far better than I do what is best in each situation. I still pour out my heart in sorrow, and sing out my joy when we talk, just as Jesus must have those many times when “he went up on the mountain to talk to his father.”

As I talk to God about each of the many people of my prayer list, following the pattern Jesus taught his disciples, I have been able to leave each of them in His care…I just wait to see how He will work in their lives. And then I say, “thank you.”