The Model Prayer AKA The Lord’s Prayer AKA The Our Father AKA Thee Kingdom Prayer – Complete Session Podcast Episode
Halfway through His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seizes the teachable moment to instruct his followers about prayer and how to pray. What follows is what has become one of most recognizable passages of scripture in all of Christendom – The Lord’s Prayer. For this study we use the term “Model Prayer” since Jesus seems to offer it as a “model prayer” in Matthew 6:7-9. There He gives a warning about repetitious prayers and then says, “Pray in this manner.”
The Model Prayer is not only in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount – it is the hub of the sermon. In this prayer Jesus addresses all of the topics He brings out in the sermon itself and, in so doing, provides His followers with the framework of prayer that will enable them to live out the sermon. In one way He was saying that all of the life applications He was encouraging them to follow in His sermon could only be realized through prayer.
This prayer was so significant in the 1st Century Church that we find it in the Didache (c. AD 80-120) – a handbook developed by the early church fathers which gave instruction of how churches were to “do church.” In Chapter 8 of the Didache, church members were told to recite the Lord’s Prayer 3 times each day. Unfortunately, The Lord’s Prayer has become one of those meaningless repetitions Jesus warned us about in Matthew 6:7 which is often said in something of perfunctory way. However, if we were to adopt the practice of the 1st Century church and pray this prayer carefully, reflecting on what we are praying, then 3 times a day we would remember:
Who God is.
What He wants.
Who meets our needs.
How we are to relate to Him.
How we are to relate to others.
Who the enemy is.
Who our Defender is.
& Who should receive Glory in our daily living.
For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever and ever,
AMEN!