🙌 Standard & Longer Lord's Prayer: Seek 1st The Father, His Honor Kingdom Will; Then Our Provision, Forgiveness for Us, Others, Kept from Sin & Evil

[Chrysostom]

It is a good and faithful thing to take the prayer the Lord Himself gave us and to pray it not as empty repetition but with understanding, reverence and earnest desire, just as you have described.

Your outline follows the wisdom of that prayer very well. To seek first the Father, His name, His Kingdom and His will, and then to bring our own needs for provision, forgiveness and deliverance, is the order Christ taught us. When we put God first, we learn to ask for all other things in their proper place.

To say Our Father in heaven is itself a great gift. We who were once in darkness and far off have been brought near through the blood of Christ, washed in the baptism of forgiveness, and made children by adoption. By the Spirit we are able to cry Abba, Father, with the same intimate confidence that the Son showed. For this reason every prayer should begin with thanksgiving, remembering what God has done for us in giving His Son, raising Him and pouring out His Spirit, rather than rushing quickly to our requests.

To pray Hallowed be Your name is to ask that His gracious and compassionate character, revealed in all His names and works, would be honored in our own thoughts, words and actions, and honored in the world. Our lives should cause His name to be reverenced, not dishonored.

To pray Your Kingdom come and Your will be done is to ask for His righteousness, peace and joy to be formed in us through the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control, and for His will to be done in us as it is done in heaven. We ask this both for the present, that we would know and obey His will and bear fruit as His disciples, and for the fullness to come when Christ returns and His Kingdom is fully manifest.

To pray Give us this day our daily bread is to acknowledge that we live not by bread alone but by every word from God, and to trust Him for all our needs, spiritual, physical and daily, so that we may love Him with all our strength and love our neighbor as ourselves.

To pray Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors reminds us of surpassing mercy. As the servant who owed a great debt was forgiven far more than he asked when he fell down and pleaded, so we have been forgiven an immeasurable debt. Having received such forgiveness, we must extend it to others. Prayer and an unforgiving spirit cannot stand together. If we ask God to forgive us, we must also forgive those who have sinned against us, praying for them and entrusting judgment to God, who alone saves and judges.

To pray Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil is to ask for watchfulness and protection. Prayer is a great weapon for the daily warfare we face, with its many temptations, deceptions and trials. We need it in the morning before we go out and at night, and we need it continually. Even the apostles sought the prayers of the church, and we too should both pray for ourselves and ask for the prayers of fellow believers, while also remaining alert and persevering ourselves.

Christ Himself showed us how to pray. When He prayed, Father I thank You that You have heard Me, He did not pray because He lacked power, but for the sake of those standing by, to show that His will and the Father's will are one and to teach the weak to trust. In the same way, when He told Peter, I have prayed for you, He spoke in a lowly way to strengthen a shaken disciple. He accommodates our weakness and teaches us to lean wholly on the Father.

So continue as you have begun, praying this pattern with care, with thanksgiving, with a forgiving heart, and with perseverance. Pray it morning and evening, and through the day, asking God to make His name holy in you, to establish His Kingdom in you, and to keep you from sin and the evil one until He brings you safely into His everlasting Kingdom. We join you in this prayer and ask God to hear it and answer according to His power and glory, for His is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever, in the name of Jesus, Amen.

 

[Silas]

Your thoughtful meditation on the prayer Jesus taught is encouraging and it reflects the very pattern He intended. He did not give these words to be repeated quickly from memory without thought. There is great value when you take the prayer slowly, phrase by phrase, and really consider what each request means. In that way it becomes a model that shapes all of our praying.

You have captured the right order, and that order matters. True prayer begins with God and His purposes and it returns to God in worship. It is not a tool to get our own will done on earth. It is the way we align our hearts with His will so that His will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. God has given each person freedom of choice and He will not force His way against that freedom, but when you pray you open the door for Him to do what He has desired to do all along. That is why the first requests are not about our needs at all. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done. To pray that sincerely is to say, Lord, let Your name be honored in my thoughts and words and actions, let Your reign be seen in my life, and let Your purposes be accomplished.

That is what it means to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness as Jesus taught in Matthew 6:33. When the kingdom is first, when His righteousness and His reign are the priority, then life comes into balance and He takes care of all the other things. Prayer keeps first things first. We remember that there are two kingdoms in conflict, the kingdom of light and life under God and the kingdom of darkness, and we who have been delivered through Christ are now called to see His kingdom come through lives marked by righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, by love and truth and humility, and by deliverance for others who are still in darkness. We also pray with hope for the day when that kingdom will come in fullness and Christ will reign openly, and it is right to pray as Scripture closes, even so come, Lord Jesus.

Only after that foundation does Jesus teach us to bring our personal needs. Give us this day our daily bread reminds us to look to the Father for every kind of provision, not only physical bread but every word that comes from Him and every spiritual and daily need, trusting Him to supply so that we can love Him and love our neighbor. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors is the one petition Jesus pauses to emphasize afterward. If we forgive others, our Father forgives us, but if we withhold forgiveness, we close our own hearts to His mercy. It is a serious call to confess our own sin honestly before God and to release those who have sinned against us, entrusting judgment to Him. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil is a prayer for protection from sin and deception and from the evil one himself, asking for His keeping power day by day.

And prayer rightly ends where it began, with worship. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. To close with praise is to express confidence that God has heard and will answer according to His perfect will. The wisest prayer we can pray is simply, Lord, have Your way in my life, accomplish Your complete and perfect will.

Continue to pray in this way, not to impress others and not as empty repetition, but quietly and sincerely before the Father who sees in secret. As you do, He will shape your desires to match His own and He will answer in a way that brings honor to His name and good to you and to others through you.