The Lord’s Prayer: Is God your prayer piñata

The Lord’s Prayer is probably one of the most well-known portions of Scripture. We see it in Luke Chapter 11:1–4 and also in Matthew Chapter 6:9–13.

 

Its also perhaps one of the first passages that most of us learnt or were encouraged to memorise as children or when we first gave our life to Christ, and the prayer itself has been an essential part of the Christian tradition since it was first given to the church by Jesus Christ.

As we read in Luke chapter 11:1, one of the disciples came to Jesus asking Him, essentially, how to pray and not what to pray. It shows us that the disciple who brought his request to Jesus was looking more for an outline of the kind of prayer that is pleasing to God than a precise set of words to be offered every time he went before His Creator in prayer.

 

This disciple would have known that praying for his needs was approved by God as do we; but what he needed to know was the context in which he should ask for such needs to be supplied. So Jesus gave Him this context in the Lord’s Prayer, providing us His church with a model for structuring our prayers that will help us in every generation, in every time and in every place.

 

Using the Lord’s Prayer as a model involves prioritising our petitions according to the prayer’s structure. The first thing Jesus prays is that God’s name would be hallowed and that His kingdom would come. That the world would recognise God as holy and seek His kingdom is to be the very first thing we seek in prayer. If at this bible study we are only reminded of this and put it into practice in our own prayer life then it would have been a successful time together and GOD would have been glorified. If our prayers are not filled with petitions for the Lord to be glorified in all the earth, we probably need to restructure our prayers. The very breath in which we use to lift our prayers is kept in motion by God and created by him. Wow! What a truthful thought, that puts us firmly in our place. 

 

Is God your prayer piñata or is he “Our father in Heaven, who’s name is hallowed, sacred, revered and holy, who’s kingdom we want to see and who’s will we want on earth as it is in heaven.

 

I hope this has blessed you.