The Lord's Prayer

Throughout the next seven weeks as we focus on the Lenten journey, we will spend a lot of time praying the Lord's Prayer. You may be wondering why. The short answer is: We need help with prayer. Want a longer answer? Okay...

From our point of view, there is a fairly obvious order of priorities. We're usually in some sort of mess, and we want God to get us out of it. Then we've usually got some fairly pressing needs, and we want God to supply them. It may strike us at that point that there's a larger world out there. Again, we probably move from mess to wants: please sort out the Middle East, please feed the hungry, please house the homeless. 

But then, once more, it may dawn on us that there's not just a larger world out there; there's a larger God out there. He's not just a celestial cleaner-upper and sorter-outer of our messes and wants. He is God. He is the living God. And he is our Father. If we linger here, we may find our priorities quietly turned inside out. The contents may remain; the order will change. With that change, we move at last from paranoia to prayer; from fuss to faith. 

The Lord's Prayer is designed to help us make this change: a change of priority, not a change of content. This prayer doesn't pretend that pain and hunger aren't real. Some religions say that; Jesus didn't. This prayer doesn't use the greatness and majesty of God to belittle the human plight. Some religions do that; Jesus didn't. This prayer starts by addressing God intimately and lovingly, as "Father"—and by bowing before his greatness and majesty. If you can hold those two together, you're already on the way to understanding what Christianity is all about.

Let me suggest three practical ways to use the Lord's Prayer:

First, there is the time-honored method of making the Lord's Prayer the framework for regular daily praying. Take each clause at a time, and, while holding each in turn in the back of your mind, call into the front of your mind the particular things you want to pray for, as it were, under that heading. Under the clause, "your kingdom come," for example, it would be surprising if you didn't want to include the peace of the world, with some particular instances. The important thing is to let the medicine and music of the prayer encircle the specific people for whom you are praying, the specific situations about which you are concerned, so that you see them transformed, bathed in the healing light of the Lord's love as expressed in the prayer. (If you are interested, see below for a handout describing the details of using the Lord's Prayer as a pattern for your own prayer.)

Second, some people use the Lord's Prayer in the same way that some use the Orthodox Jesus-prayer. Repeat it slowly, again and again, in the rhythm of your breathing, so that it becomes, as we say, second nature. Those of us who live busy or stressful lives may find a discipline like that very difficult; but, again, it may be precisely people like that who need—perhaps, physically need—the calming and nourishing medicine of this prayer to be woven into the fabric of their subconscious. Next time you make a car journey by yourself, leave the radio switched off, and try it. Yes, it takes time. What else would you expect? 

Third, you might like, for a while, to take the clauses of the prayer one by one and make each in turn your "prayer for the day." Sunday: "Our Father in heaven… " Monday: "Hallowed be your name… " Tuesday: "Your kingdom come…" Wednesday: "Give us this day…" Thursday: "Forgive us our debts…" Friday: "Lead us not into temptation…" Saturday: "Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever…" Use the clause of the day as your private retreat, into which you can step at any moment, through which you can pray for the people you meet, the things you're doing, all that's going on around you. The "prayer of the day" then becomes the lens through which you see the world. 

There are, of course, dozens of other ways in which this prayer can be used, by groups or by individuals. These are just some suggestions for a start.


THE LORD'S PRAYER
"This, then, is how you should pray:

"'Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, 
    but deliver us from the evil one, 
for yours is the kingdom 
    and the power 
and the glory forever. Amen.'" (Matthew 6:9-13, NIV)


A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA
As I've mentioned before, I have been greatly helped on my journey of faith by Dallas Willard's writings. Below is a passage out of his book The Divine Conspiracy, in which he describes the process he went through in learning to love the Lord's prayer...

I personally did not find the Lord’s Prayer to be the doorway into a praying life until I was in my mid-twenties. In my family that prayer was, for three generations I know of, always said in unison at the breakfast table. But at some point, for reasons I cannot explain, I began to use it in a new way: taking each phrase of it and slowly and meditatively entering into the depths of its meaning, elaborating within it important details of my current life.  

When I began to “live” in the prayer in this way—for that is the only way I can describe it—there were many nights when I would awaken about two o’clock and spend an hour of delight before God just dwelling in one or more phrases from it. I had to make a point at times, as I still do, of praying thoughtfully on through the entire prayer. Otherwise the riches of one or two phrases in the prayer would be all I could develop, and I would not benefit from all its contents. 

Sometimes now I do not begin at the first request but go immediately to the end or the middle and settle in there for a while. At other times I will use just the words of the address, “Our Father filling the heavens,” to establish and reestablish address and orientation as I go through the day. For some reason I especially profit from using those words while driving Los Angeles freeways. They put the vast, sprawling urban landscape, with a greater population than many nations, into its proper perspective before God. And they transform my sense of who and where I am. I have never found any situation in which they failed to be extremely powerful.  

There is, of course, much more to prayer than the Lord’s Prayer. It is a prayer that teaches us to pray. It is a foundation of the praying life: its introduction and its continuing basis. It is an enduring framework for all praying. You only move beyond it provided you stay within it. It is the necessary bass in the great symphony of prayer. It is a powerful lens through which one constantly sees the world as God himself sees it. 

The English wording long familiar from the King James Version is a treasure now interwoven with Western consciousness. It may be of some use in practice, however, to reword the prayer to capture better the fullness of its meanings and its place in the gospel of the kingdom:  

Dear Father always near us, may your name be treasured and loved, may your rule be completed in us— may your will be done here on earth in just the way it is done in heaven. Give us today the things we need today, and forgive us our sins and impositions on you as we are forgiving all who in any way offend us. Please don’t put us through trials, but deliver us from everything bad. Because you are the one in charge, and you have all the power, and the glory too is all yours—forever— which is just the way we want it! 

“Just the way we want it” is not a bad paraphrase for “amen.” What is needed at the end of this great prayer is a ringing affirmation of the goodness of God and God’s world. If your nerves can take it, you might (occasionally?) try “Whoopee!” I imagine God himself will not mind.

........

Along with personalizing the wording of the Lord's Prayer, you might also consider using the following attachment to guide you through using the Lord's Prayer as a pattern for your own prayer.