The Model Prayer
After this manner therefore pray; ‘Our Father, which is in heaven” Mat
6:9
Every teacher
knows the power of example. He not only
tells the child what to do and how to do it, but shows him how it really can be
done. In condescension to our weakness,
our heavenly Teacher has given us the very words we are to take with us as we
draw near to our Father. We have in them
a form of prayer in which there breathe the freshness and fullness of the
Eternal Life. So simple that the child
can lisp it, so divinely rich that it comprehends all that God can give. A form of prayer that becomes the model and
inspiration for all other prayer, and yet always draws us back to itself as the
deepest utterance of our souls before our God.
“Our Father, which is in Heaven!” To appreciate this word of
adoration aright, I must remember that none of the saints had in Scripture ever
ventured to address God as their Father.
The invocation places us at once in the centre of the wonderful
revelation the Son came to make of His Father as our Father too.
It comprehends the
mystery of redemption – Christ delivering us from the curse that we might
become the children of God. The mystery
of regeneration – the Spirit in the new birth giving us the new life, and the mystery
of faith – ere yet the redemption is accomplished or understood, the word is
given on the lips of the disciples to prepare them for the blessed experience
still to come.
The words are the
key to the whole prayer, to all prayer.
It takes time, it takes life to study them; it will take eternity to
understand them fully. The knowledge of
Gods Father-love is the first and simplest, but also the last and highest
lesson in the school of prayer. It is in
the personal relation to the living God, and the personal conscious fellowship
of love with himself, that prayer begins.
It is in the knowledge of God’s Fatherliness, revealed by the Holy
Spirit, that the power of prayer will be found to root and grow. In the infinite tenderness and pity and
patience of the infinite Father, in His loving readiness to hear and to help,
the life of prayer has its joy. O let us
take time, until the Spirit has made these words to us Spirit and truth,
filling heart and life. ‘Our Father, which is in heaven.” Then we are indeed within the veil, in the
secret place of power where prayer always prevails.
‘Hallowed by Your name: or May Your name be kept holy. There is something here that strikes us at
once. While we ordinarily first bring
our own needs to God in prayer, and then think of what belongs to God and His
interests, the Master reverses the order.
Firstly, it is; ‘Your name, Your Kingdom, Your will’; then, ‘give us,
forgive us, lead us, deliver us.’ The
lesson is of more importance that we think.
In true worship the Father must be first, must be all. The sooner I learn to forget myself in the
desire that He may be glorified, the richer will the blessing be that prayer
will bring to myself. No one ever loses
by what he sacrifices for the Father.
This must influence
all our prayer. There are two sorts of
prayer: personal and intercessory. The
latter ordinarily occupies the lesser part of our time and energy. This must not be. Christ has opened the school of prayer
specially to train intercessors for the great work of bringing down, by their
faith and prayer, the blessings of His work and love on the world around. There can be no deep growth in prayer unless
this is made our aim. The little child may
ask of the father only what it needs for itself; and yet it soon learns to say,
‘give some for sister too.’ But the
grown-up son, who only lives for the father’s interest and takes charge of the
father’s business asks more largely, and gets all that is asked. And Jesus would train us to the blessed life
of consecration and service, in which our interests are all subordinate to the
Name, and the Kingdom, and the Will of the Father.
O let us live for
this, and let, on each act of adoration, saying, ‘Our Father,’ there follow in
the same breath, ‘Your name, Your Kingdom, Your will;’ – for this we look up
and long.
‘Hallowed be Your name.’ What name? this
new name of Father. The word Holy, is
the central word of the Old Testament; the name Father, of the new. In this name of Love all the holiness and
glory of God are now to be revealed. And
how is the name to be hallowed? By God
Himself, ‘I will hallow my great name
which has been profaned’. Our prayer
must be that in ourselves, in all God’s children, in presence of the world, God
Himself would reveal the holiness, the Divine power, the hidden glory of the
name of Father. The Spirit of the Father
is the Holy Spirit; it is only when we yield ourselves to be led of Him, that
the name will be hallowed in our prayers and our lives. Let us learn the prayer: ‘Our Father,
hallowed be Your name.”
“Your Kingdom
come.” The father is a King and has a Kingdom. The son and heir of a king has no higher
ambition that the glory of his Father’s kingdom. In time of war or danger this becomes his
passion; he can think of nothing else.
The children of the Father are here in the enemy’s territory, where the
kingdom, which is in heaven, is not yet fully manifested. What is more natural than, when they learn to
hallow the Father name, they should long and cry with deep enthusiasm: ‘Thy
kingdom come.” The coming of the kingdom
is the one great event on which the revelation of the Father’s glory, the
blessedness of His children, the salvation of the world depends.
On our prayers too
the coming of the Kingdom waits. Shall
we not join in the deep longing cry of the redeemed: ‘Your Kingdom come’? Let us learn it in the school of Jesus.
‘Your will be done, on earth as it is in
heaven.’ This petition is too frequently applied alone to the suffering of
the will of God. In heaven God’s will is
done, and the master teaches the child to ask that His will may be done on earth
just as in heaven. In the spirit of
adoring submission and ready obedience.
Because the will of God is the glory of heaven, the doing of it is the
blessedness of heaven. As the will is
done, the kingdom of heaven comes into the heart. And wherever faith has accepted the Father’s
love, obedience accepts the Father’s will.
The surrender to, and the prayer for a life of heaven-like obedience, is
the spirit of childlike prayer.
‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ When first the child has yielded himself to
the Father in the care for His Name, His Kingdom, and His will, he has full
liberty to ask for his daily bread. A
master cares for the food of his servant, a general of his soldiers, a father
of his child. And will not the Father in
heaven care for the child who has in prayer given themselves up to His
interests? We may indeed in full
confidence say: Father, I live for Your honour and Your work; I know that You
care for me. Consecration to God and His
will gives wonderful liberty in prayer for temporal things: the whole earthly
life is given to the Father’s loving care.
‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven
our debtors.” As
bread is the first need of the body, so forgiveness for the soul. And the provision for the one is as sure as
for the other. We are children but
sinners too; our right of access to the Father’s presence we owe to the
precious blood and the forgiveness it has won for us. Let us beware of the prayer for forgiveness
becoming a formality; only what is really confessed is really forgiven. Let us in faith accept the forgiveness as
promised; as a spiritual reality, an actual transaction between God and us, it
is the entrance into all the Father’s love and all the privileges of
children. Such forgiveness, as a living
experience, is impossible without a forgiving spirit to others: as forgiven
expresses the heavenward, so forgiving the earthward, relation of God’s
child. In each prayer, I must be able to
say that I know of no one whom I do not heartily love.
‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
the evil one.’ Our daily bread, the pardon of our sins, and
then our being kept from all sin and the power of the evil one, in these three
petitions all our personal need is comprehended. The prayer for bread and pardon must be
accompanied by the surrender to live in all things in holy obedience to the
Father’s will, and the believing prayer in everything to be kept by the power
of the indwelling Spirit from the power of the evil one.
Children of
God! It is thus Jesus would have us to
pray to our Father in heaven. O let His
name and Kingdom and will, have the first place in our love; His providing, and
pardoning and keeping love will be our sure portion. So the prayer will lead us up to the true
child-life: the Father all to the child, the Father all for the child. We shall understand how Father and child, the
‘Yours’ and the ‘Our’ are all one, and how the heart that begins its prayer
with the God-devoted ‘Yours’, will have the power in faith to speak out the
‘our’ too. Such prayer will, indeed, be
the fellowship and interchange of love, always bringing us back in trust and worship
to Him who is not only the Beginning but the End. “For
Yours is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory for ever AMEN.” Son of the Father, teach us to pray, ‘Our
Father…”
LORD TEACH US TO
PRAY
O Lord You are the only begotten Son, teach us, we
plead, to pray. “Our Father.” We thank
You Lord, for these Living Blessed Words that You have given us. We thank You for the millions who in them
have learnt to know and worship the Father, and for what they have been to
us. Lord! It is as if we needed days and
weeks in Your school with each separate petition; so deep and full are
they. But we look to You to lead us
deeper into their meaning: do it we pray, for Your names sake’ Your name is Son
of the Father.
Lord, You said once, ‘No man knows the Father except
the Son, and he to whom the Son reveals Him” and again: ‘I make known to them
Your name, and will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be
in them.’ Lord Jesus, reveal to us the
Father, let his name, his infinite Father-love, the love with which He loved
You, according to Your prayer, be in us.
Then shall we say rightly, ‘Our Father’.
Then shall we apprehend Your teaching, and the first spontaneous
breathing of our heart will be; “Our Father, Your Name, Your Kingdom, Your Will,”
and we shall bring our needs and sins and our temptation to Him in the
confidence that the love of such a Father cares for all. Blessed Lord, we Your scholars, trust You; do
teach us to pray, ‘Our Father’, AMEN
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