The Lord’s Prayer: The right approach.

Tuesday December 6, 2022

We must always avoid doing what we do to be seen by others.

In instructing us about prayer, the Lord told us to shut out all others and to shut ourselves in with God and then concentrate on our relationship with Him.

“Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when, upon His knees, he comes face to face with God.” [Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount]

I’m sure there are some that shun from saying that is the “highest” activity, but it certainly must be among the highest.

The petitions from the first part are inseparable from one another:

Mat 6:9-10

“Pray, then, in this way:

'Our Father who is in heaven, [the address]

Hallowed be Your name.

10 'Your kingdom come.

Your will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven.

The final three are also inseparable and completely depend on our desire for the first three. They are our contentment in desire for earthly things; the grace of God in light of our shame over our sins; our humility in the face of the failures of others; and our desire to navigate the narrow road of life well.

Mat 6:11-13

'Give us this day our daily bread.

12 'And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

13 'And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

The fact that all the petitions are imperative (commandments) is simply a common way in the Greek language to request from a superior, but it does indicate an emphatic request. Our desire must be of the highest in the consideration of these petitions.

Each petition expresses a desire from us. By praying them we are faced with our desire concerning them – everyday. We are to forget about the opinions of others and be with God alone in our inner room and deal with our desires truthfully and honestly.

We must initially face God as Father and each of us His children under His authority and laws and in fear of Him, while at the same time experiencing all the comfort and blessing that comes with having such a Father. Then it is our desire for His sphere that is upon us – heaven and His holiness. Then we face our desire for His kingdom and will (they are coming to stay soon enough). As we will see, these truths will force us to evaluate our conduct. Then we are faced with our desire in terms of needs; our advantage of forgiveness and that in our position amongst others; and finally our desire to properly navigate the new and living way (the narrow road) in the midst of a powerful enemy.

I am suspecting that a lack of understanding about the proper approach that Christ gives us is one of the main reasons, if not the main reason, why Christians have weak prayer lives. They get nothing out of it because they have no real encounter with God as their Father and the Lord Jesus as their Brother. They only encounter themselves and their problems in a verbal monologue.

Looking at the prayer, we remind ourselves as regard to the first matter of how vital it is to have the right approach. People pray and leave without peace and they wonder why prayer doesn’t work. “Nothing happened,” they say, or that they didn’t get any satisfaction. Most of the trouble is due to the fact that their approach to prayer has been all wrong. They did not know what they were doing. They didn’t heed the instruction. They figured that prayer was like any other request in life, you simply submit it, most often to the complaint department.

We tend to be self-centered in prayer. We think only of ourselves and our troubles and perplexities. We start talking about them at once, and of course nothing happens. Who are you talking to? We say, God the Father. Well, did you just say the name “Father” without a thought of who He is and who He is to you? If that how you would speak to someone you should revere? You might as well talk to a wall.

Some will protest. “These issues are occupying my mind so much that I have to petition God about them before I do anything.” Everyone understands this, but wouldn’t all of us view our issues in a different light after we truly praised God? I can imagine that after we unload our concerns on God, if we were to praise Him as we should, those concerns will be seen in a different light and our prayers about them will be altered. Why not praise Him first?

And unless we’re going to take the Lord’s Prayer lightly, we have to acknowledge its order. God is the subject of the entire first half and then come our needs, troubles, and difficult decisions. Therefore, while it is true that we don’t hear a command to keep the order, we should take it to heart and at the least maintain it as often as we can. I would think that if the order didn’t matter, then we would not see any affect upon us by maintaining it. However, if the order does matter, than a great affect we would see over time.

It is only a few minutes of putting ourselves and our lives aside as we honor the one who is Sovereign of all.

The first step to prayer is recollection. There is a sense in which every man when he begins to pray to God should put his hand upon his mouth. Job shot off his mouth from his pain (we all understand).

But once God spoke to him, Job realized something.

Job 40:4

“Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to Thee?

I lay my hand on my mouth.”

I know the difficulty with this. We are coming to God to talk after all. Time is precious. Let’s get on with it. But it is vital that at first we listen. We open with “Our Father,” and then we need to recall who He is to us, and to the others in the body of Christ - at the least.

We are but human, and we are pressed by the urgency of our position, the cares, the anxieties, the troubles, the anguish of the mind, the bleeding heart, whatever it is. Like children we start speaking at once.

But think about it. What good will your petition do you if you do not at first feel the mighty and gracious arms of your Father in heaven around you? If you don’t have grace and mercy and promises and heaven in mind - won’t you only be stating your problem to heaven and then running out like you ordered fast-food. And, you expect immediate service by the way. I’m not saying that this is works for gifts. What I am saying is that thoughts about God matter. Proper thoughts about who He is matters greatly, which is why we spent time in the Psalms. Praising God matters greatly to the health of our own soul, and leaving prayer with God with peace and contentment fully depends upon it.

Perhaps David strikes the balance.