The Lord’s Prayer is probably the most familiar scripture to people all over the world in all different languages.  I have recited the Lord’s Prayer thousands of times as a pastor and thousands more as a parishioner and as a guy walking through the neighborhood.  I actually learned the Lord’s Prayer years after I memorized it.  In fact, I think it has been since I have lived in College Station that I really started getting it.  William Barclay called it, “a prayer to use by itself and a pattern for all prayer.” 

Praying was one of the priorities of Jesus; it was one of his habits.  Christopher Maricle identified eight essential habits in Jesus’ ministry.  Praying is in his top three - right up there with healing and loving.  Maricle points out in his book, The Jesus Priorities, that Jesus prayed alone, prayed persistently, prayed in the presence of others, and he prayed simply.

Of course, the most familiar prayer of Jesus is the prayer he taught us to pray.  But let me ask you a question, “Did you pray it like you mean it?”  Jesus taught on prayer several times.  The first recorded teaching was in the Sermon on the Mount.  Let’s look at this teaching found in Matthew 6:5-15.  Hear now the Word of the Lord:

⁵“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. ⁶But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. ⁷“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. ⁸Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

⁹“Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. ¹⁰Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. ¹¹Give us this day our daily bread. ¹²And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. ¹³And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. ¹⁴For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; ¹⁵but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

This is the word of God for the people of God.  In this passage Matthew reported to his readers, Jesus’ expectations for prayer to be a personal partnership with God, who hears our petitions.  Let us pray - but this time pray it like you mean it.
 

This Prayer is Personal

It was obvious to Jesus’ disciples that there was a different quality to Jesus’ prayers.  He is reported as praying or talking about praying thirty-two times in the gospels.  Remember Christopher Marcile’s question that prompted the research and writing for his book, “What did Jesus consistently say and do during his public ministry that would be instructive for us?”  He prayed and talked about prayer a lot.  His prayers were so compelling that Luke reported that the disciples requested of him, “Lord, teach us to pray.”  The very first thing we notice about the prayer that he taught his followers, the prayer that we have offered hundreds and thousands of times, is that this is a personal prayer.  It is personal in how it connects us to each other and how it relates us to God.

“Our Father, who art in heaven,” packs so much in it that it could take us weeks to plumb the depths.  Let me give you the Reader’s Digest reflection.  Because God is our Father, we are siblings of each other, watched over by One who sees the big picture.  When we say, “Our Father” we are acknowledging the existence of other children in the family.  In fact, every first person pronoun in this prayer is plural.  When you begin this prayer be aware of those around you who are praying this same prayer and embrace them in your hearts as brothers and sisters with the same heavenly father.  When you begin this prayer, be mindful of the Catholics, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Christians throughout this town and throughout this world that are coming to the throne of God as children.  This is a personal prayer and it connects us personally with those around us.

It is a personal prayer that relates us intimately to God.  Jesus invites us, instructs us, to relate to God as our Father.  This is incredible!  In fact, one commentator addressed the warning of Jesus against babbling like the Gentiles, by pointing out that the non-Jews in the Roman Empire had this habit of naming every god that they could think of so as not to leave anyone out.  Just imagine sitting through or participating in such a prayer, “Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Pluto, Libitina, Minerva, Appollo, Diana, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Bellona, Vulcan, Vesta, Priapus, Cupid, Juventas, Persipina, and many, many more.”  What if you happen to be bilingual in Latin and Greek?  You get the picture.  Jesus taught his hearers that all that nonsense is unnecessary. We are invited into an intimate father-child relationship.  This is what set Jesus apart in his prayers.  This is what impressed those who watched what he consistently said and did.  He prayed relationally.

This past week my daughter called me twice.  We spoke on the phone on Sunday and on Monday.  I think I set a record on Sunday and broke it on Monday for the length of time I spent in one phone call.  She got out of church on Sunday and called to tell me something.  She attends church on 69^th Street and Lexington, close to Central Park.  She lives on 14^th Street, 55 blocks away.  Generally she takes the Subway home, but it was a nice evening, the time change kept it light outside, and she wanted to talk.  75 minutes later she was home and standing outside her apartment, while we continued to talk.  How could we carry on a conversation that long and the next night talk even longer?  Because she is my daughter and I am her father.  There is a relationship there.

This is the kind of invitation we are given in the first two words of this memorable prayer.  But before we leave the personal elements of this prayer, remember that we said, “Our Father, who art in heaven.”  This means we are relating to our Father who sees the big picture.  From heaven where time and space are not boundaries to be observed, Our Father sees the beginning and the end of this recession.  Our Father sees our life path and works for good in our lives.  This is shown throughout the scriptures when God’s will prevailed over the jealous brothers of Joseph who threw him in a pit, sold him into slavery, and reported him dead.  Our Father saw that Joseph would deliver those same people who betrayed him.  It is shown in a God who at the cross of Friday can see the empty grave of Sunday.  Our Father sees the big picture and can be trusted.  When you pray - pray it like you mean it.  This prayer is personal.
 

This Prayer puts us in a Partnership with God

After a beautiful beginning relating us to each other and to God in an intimate way, this prayer leads us into a partnership with God where we pray for three things to occur on earth as they do in heaven.  This week, I had the chance to look at the Greek version of this prayer and saw what one of the commentators that I read alluded to, the parallelism of these three phrases:

            Thy name be hallowed

            Thy kingdom come

            Thy will be done

These are to be accomplished on earth as they are in heaven.  How does this happen?  T.W. Manson wrote in 1947, “There is a sense in which the kingdom comes whenever and wherever God’s will is obeyed and acknowledged on earth.”  Jesus was adamant about the kingdom of God not being a political entity that was to be established as an earthly empire.  It is bigger than that.  It is so big that even now there are active subjects in this kingdom who bring glory to the king when they reflect his character.  So then, when we pray for our Father’s name to be hallowed, and for our Father’s kingdom to come, and for our Father’s will to be done, we are committing ourselves to do that very thing.  R. T. France wrote that it is an ethical prayer and an eschatological prayer.  We commit ourselves to its embodiment even as we anticipate its fulfillment.

Millard Fuller is one person who seemed to get this, but he didn’t always.  Fuller was a gifted entrepreneur from Alabama who literally rose from rags to riches.  He was a millionaire by the time he has 29, an in those days (the mid-60’s) a millionaire really meant something.  In spite of his success in business, his life was falling apart.  His marriage was on the rocks, his health was failing, and his integrity was almost non-existent. It was then that he realized his need for “Our Father who art in heaven.”  He and his wife, Linda, sought God and God’s will for their lives.  They wound up doing an incredible thing.  They sold their possessions and moved to Americas, Georgia to Koinonia Farm, a Christian community where people were looking for practical ways to apply Christ’s teachings.  Millard and Linda Fuller received a vision there that continues to be the guiding mission of Habitat for Humanity International and the Fuller Center.  Holly Chapman, the spokesperson for the Fuller Center said shortly after Fuller’s death last month, “His vision was that every person in every country of the world has a simple decent place to live.”  He didn’t live to see that vision become a reality, he only inspired the building of 300,000 homes in 100 countries since 1976, but he was committed to being an active subject in God’s kingdom, doing God’s will.

When we pray for our Father’s name to be hallowed and for our Father’s kingdom to come, and for our Father’s will to be done, we are committing ourselves to that very thing, until it becomes a global and eternal reality.  Pray it like you mean it.  As you pray hallowed be thy name, think of ways that you can treat God’s name as holy.  After all, you bear that name as your own when you profess yourself to be a Christian, a follower of Christ, a child of God.  When you pray for God’s kingdom to come, what does that look like and how can you live as a subject in this kingdom?  When you pray for God’s will to be done, what do you think that will is?  How does your prayerful commitment to God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven affect your relationship with those around you?  This prayer is an ethical and eschatological partnership with God.
 

This Prayer places our Petitions before God

Having related personally to our Father in heaven and committing ourselves to be partners in his kingdom, we are now invited to bring our petitions before God with a radical trust.  Just as there are three phrases of partnership there are three phrases of petition:

            Give us

            Forgive us

            Lead us

We are to pray for God’s provision – daily bread, but we pray with the faith of people in a desert, “Give us this day our daily bread,” is a prayer for manna, for the daily sustenance that may not last past tomorrow.  Why?  Because tomorrow we will pray the prayer again and trust in a way that assures us that though we cannot see tomorrow’s manna, we can trust a God who promises to provide it.  Maybe this is why Jesus would say later in this Sermon on the Mount, “Don’t worry about your life, your heavenly Father knows what you need.”

We are to pray for God’s pardon - forgiveness of trespasses, missteps, going where we were not suppose to go and not going to places where we were suppose to go.  Confession is essential for the Christian.  When you pray this prayer, pray it like you mean it.  Tell God what it is that you acknowledge as a trespass, a debt that you could never pay.  Then when God has forgiven you, for God’s sake, forgive others.  It is incongruous for us to receive mercy from God and hold a grudge against another.

We are to pray for God’s protection – keeping us away from temptation and guarding us from the evil one that would love to distract us from God’s kingdom and will.  John Newton stated that he felt this presence of the evil one every time he prayed.  He said that he felt so weak while praying that “sometimes the buzzing of a fly in the room is an overmatch for my strength.”  What are your temptations and what are the traps set out by the evil one who would love to distract you from this prayer and the fulfillment of it?  Pray it like you mean it. 

The prayer ends with a doxology that many scholars doubt was an original part of this prayer.  However, most scholars do acknowledge that prayers typically did end with a doxology that left the presence of God in the same way that it entered, praising the one to whom we pray.  As this prayer became a regular part of corporate worship and private devotion, this doxology was consistently employed.  It is certainly biblically sound so I encourage you to use it, for thine is the kingdom (it is always God’s and how well we do if we acknowledged this and not develop ulcers over trying to maintain our own little kingdom) and the power (God is capable of fulfilling the very prayer that we boldly offer) and the glory (imagine what it would be like if we brought this into focus every time we pray, how much anxiety would be eliminated by realizing God’s glory) forever (complete confidence, especially in a period when the present can produce so much stress).  

These are 68 words that can change your life if you pray it like you mean it.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.