Ephesians 6:18-20
Probably you have heard the saying, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” Do you realize God doesn’t believe in that? God invites us to work with him and help him do his kingdom building work. We should rejoice that he gives us such a high privilege!! We should feel like the little girl in the old Shake and Bake commercial. This is so many years ago now I won’t be surprised if you don’t remember how many times we heard her say, with a big smile, “It’s shake and bake, and I helped!” My focus here is on her obvious joy at having been in the kitchen. That’s how we should feel about our work of supplication. “It’s God’s Kingdom, and I helped!” That’s how God wants it. And we should want it as much as that little girl in the commercial.
You may have noticed that today’s text is taken from the ending portion of Paul’s discussion of spiritual warfare and the importance of putting on the armor of God. We have heard lots of sermons about putting on the armor of God. But do you realize that all of those pieces of armor relate more to what goes on in our minds than what is really wrapped around our bodies? Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and God’s Word. All these things come to fruition in our thought life. What counts is what we think about, meditate about, and dwell on. These things will determine how we respond to sin and temptation inside ourselves. They will also determine how we act in the world.
Prayers are also formed in our thoughts. What we think about and what we believe about God will determine how we pray, what we pray and why we pray. We fight our spiritual battles in our minds and in our prayers. In 2 Cor. 10:3-5 Paul put it succinctly, “Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
And in today’s text Paul ends by reminding us that he is an ambassador for Christ. He is in chains because the world hates the message. But the battle is not done. He asks for his supporters to continue to pray for him to be bold and fearless in his ministry. I am sure that Paul was aware of the story I want to read to you now. It occurred shortly after Paul was called into the ministry. At the time it happened, Paul was probably still at Antioch when word came. I can just imagine the day someone approached Paul saying, “Listen, I just heard the greatest story about our friends who pray in Jerusalem. Check this out!”
There was a time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. When he saw that this met with approval among the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Festival of Unleavened Bread. After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.
So, Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him. The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.
Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.
Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.” When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
“You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.
Luke preserved that story and today we know it as Acts 12:1-16. It is a powerful illustration of the power of intercessory prayer. It is also coupled with an example of our failure to fully appreciate the power of prayer! Paul didn’t want that to happen again. His ministry is full of asking people for their prayers! He constantly gives thanks to God for their prayers and credits their praying with why God is acting.
And Paul himself worked his entire ministry on the basis of prayer. For just one example, in Acts 14:23, “Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust.
In his letter to the Romans, in 15:30-32, Paul wrote, “I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Pray that I may be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea and that the contribution I take to Jerusalem may be favorably received by the Lord’s people there, so that I may come to you with joy, by God’s will, and in your company, be refreshed.”
May I say, I also want you to pray for me. Keep on praying for me. Join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Which reminded me of the saying that goes, if you don’t like the pastor you have and want a new one, pray for the one you have so that he is renewed. It might be a little early in the game for me to say such a thing to you now. But you could file it away in case you need it a few years from now, or even a few months.
When Paul called himself an ambassador, it is not as if he thought he was the only one. In 2 Cor. 5:20 he declared, “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” If Paul says that all of us are ambassadors, and urged his fellow ambassadors to struggle with him in prayer, then it is obvious that we are most effective through our prayer work. “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer,” as it says in 1 Peter 3:12. As ambassadors of God’s Kingdom, we have a sort of a political authority, representing the King of the Universe, to bring to his attention matters that we cannot change by our will.
The importance of supplication as the work of the church in partnership with God is seen in Acts 8:15, “When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit.” God didn’t just do it. He requires our prayers in partnership with his will. Our prayer work makes our ministry fruitful. Note that I did not say prayer makes our ministry more fruitful. Without prayer, there will be no fruit, for fruit comes only as we cling to the vine, Jesus Christ is the vine. We cling to him by prayer.
Jesus of course encouraged us to do the work of prayer in several places. Matthew 5:44 says, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” His is repeated in Luke 6:28, “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” How else will they repent and become Christians? In fact, Jesus himself engaged in the work of prayer, as we can easily see in the high priestly prayer of John 17. And even now, Jesus is still interceding for us at the right hand of God in heaven, as we are told in Romans 8:34. He walked the earth for 33 years. He led his disciples for three years. He died and rose again in three days. And he has been praying for us ever since, for more than 2,000 years! That’s the importance of the work of supplication prayer.
Jesus also told us that prayer is very powerful! In Matthew 21:22, it says, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” This is repeated in Mark 11:24, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” But, of course, as we understand this, it is talking about prayers we ask that are in accord with His will, because we pray in his name, we should only ask for the things he would ask for, things that will extend the Kingdom and bring glory and honor to God. And in this the Spirit helps us. Sometimes we do not know for sure what we should ask for. This is especially the case when pain and suffering are involved and we join with all creation in groaning for the completion of our redemption. Paul says this plainly in Romans 8:26, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”
Paul regularly engaged in this prayer work. We have one example in Eph. 3:14-19, “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
And another in Col. 1: 9-13, “Since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
One more in 2 Thessalonians 1:11, We constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith.”
Paul also regularly asked his Christian brothers and sisters to do the work of prayer in his letters to the churches. One example is in 2 Cor. 1:10-11, “He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.”
And in Col. 4:2-4, he said, “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.
Paul also notes another believer in Colossians 4:12, “Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.” What would it look like in my life, to be known as someone who always wrestles in prayer for the church?
Paul’s letters are full of prayers for the saints! He knows the value of this work! James also, in his famous letter, gives specific instructions for the use of prayer in worship services, with the promise that “the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective,” as it says in James 5:15-16.
The work of supplication comes with God’s invitation to join him in the Kingdom building work. Rather than actually hearing God say we should join him in this type of work. The entire Bible assumes that we will! Jesus quoted the prophet, Isaiah 56:7, who actually was quoting Jesus who inspired him when he penned these words, “My house shall be a house of prayer.” When Solomon dedicated the temple, he specifically prayed more about the prayers that would be offered there than about the animal sacrifices that would be made. The sacrifices were offered as the doorway to open access to God, But the whole reason they wanted that was so they could pray to him and seek shalom with him. Now Jesus is the door. By his perfect sacrifice, once and for all, the way is open and no man can shut it. The prayers go on!
As we conclude this series on prayer, I hope you understand I have been laying a foundation, for our entire future ministry together to be founded in prayer. That’s the biggest rock in our lives. Remember about priorities? Put the big rock in first. Prayer goes in first, so that in all things we are seeking God’s will, and everything is covered in our prayers at all times, so that in every way we are led by the Lord who gives us his vision and strength for what we are to do together. Then we will rejoice, knowing that we helped God!
When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, because they asked him to, he gave them, and ultimately us, what we call the Lord’s prayer. But really it is the Christian’s prayer. It is not he prayer the Lord prays. He doesn’t need to ask forgiveness. But it is the prayer we are to pray. So, I prefer to identify this prayer as the Cristian’s prayer.
Jesus never meant for this prayer to be set in stone or an old-fashioned language so that it would sound more holy than ordinary speech. There was no King James English when he taught it to his disciples. And they didn’t ask him to teach them what to pray. They asked him to teach them how to pray. He gave them a framework, a basic outline that they could follow and fill out with details as the specific needs changed. The prayer that Jesus taught includes all four of the aspects of prayer we have been talking about these four weeks. Listen now, here it is in the given form, using more modern language for easy access.
Our Father, who is in Heaven, Your name is holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us away from temptation, and deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
And now here is an example of how it should be used in more specific prayer.
Our Father, who is in Heaven, Your name is holy. We adore you and praise you for your holiness and everyone should know about it. Your kingdom should come, and Your will should be done on earth as it is in Heaven. We are your loyal subjects, Lord, and we want to obey your every command, but we need your help. We need your power. For example, on this earth there are shady businesses that should not be doing what they are doing there. We ask you Lord to manifest your Kingdom in those places. Claim those territories as your own and remove those businesses or change what goes on in them to something more wholesome and good for our society.
But closer to home, help our homes look like embassies of your grace. May we live as good citizens of your kingdom and constantly use every opportunity to share the good news of your gracious reign and offer of forgiveness. Show us Lord, how to minister to the people around us who need to hear the gospel. Help us to reach the young people and lead them to you. Help us to be good disciples who know how to raise up the next generation of good disciples.
Give us this day our daily bread. Lord that means we look to you for our every need. You sustain us by your word. You also provide for our material needs. Everything we have is a gift from you and we look forward to your provision so that we can do your work. And, Lord, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. We confess that we are not perfect and do not obey you wholeheartedly in every detail of our lives. And we understand that we must be humble and willing to forgive and overlook offenses committed against us because this demonstrates that we understand the magnitude of your forgiving grace towards us.
At the same time Lord, we again plead for your power to be effective in our lives. We need you to lead us away from temptation, and deliver us from the evil one. For it’s all your Kingdom. We have no power but yours and every good thing that happens or exists is to bring glory to your name only, forever, Oh Lord. Amen.
Probably you have heard the saying, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” Do you realize God doesn’t believe in that? God invites us to work with him and help him do his kingdom building work. We should rejoice that he gives us such a high privilege!! We should feel like the little girl in the old Shake and Bake commercial. This is so many years ago now I won’t be surprised if you don’t remember how many times we heard her say, with a big smile, “It’s shake and bake, and I helped!” My focus here is on her obvious joy at having been in the kitchen. That’s how we should feel about our work of supplication. “It’s God’s Kingdom, and I helped!” That’s how God wants it. And we should want it as much as that little girl in the commercial.
You may have noticed that today’s text is taken from the ending portion of Paul’s discussion of spiritual warfare and the importance of putting on the armor of God. We have heard lots of sermons about putting on the armor of God. But do you realize that all of those pieces of armor relate more to what goes on in our minds than what is really wrapped around our bodies? Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and God’s Word. All these things come to fruition in our thought life. What counts is what we think about, meditate about, and dwell on. These things will determine how we respond to sin and temptation inside ourselves. They will also determine how we act in the world.
Prayers are also formed in our thoughts. What we think about and what we believe about God will determine how we pray, what we pray and why we pray. We fight our spiritual battles in our minds and in our prayers. In 2 Cor. 10:3-5 Paul put it succinctly, “Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
And in today’s text Paul ends by reminding us that he is an ambassador for Christ. He is in chains because the world hates the message. But the battle is not done. He asks for his supporters to continue to pray for him to be bold and fearless in his ministry. I am sure that Paul was aware of the story I want to read to you now. It occurred shortly after Paul was called into the ministry. At the time it happened, Paul was probably still at Antioch when word came. I can just imagine the day someone approached Paul saying, “Listen, I just heard the greatest story about our friends who pray in Jerusalem. Check this out!”
There was a time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. When he saw that this met with approval among the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Festival of Unleavened Bread. After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.
So, Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him. The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.
Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.
Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.” When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
“You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.
Luke preserved that story and today we know it as Acts 12:1-16. It is a powerful illustration of the power of intercessory prayer. It is also coupled with an example of our failure to fully appreciate the power of prayer! Paul didn’t want that to happen again. His ministry is full of asking people for their prayers! He constantly gives thanks to God for their prayers and credits their praying with why God is acting.
And Paul himself worked his entire ministry on the basis of prayer. For just one example, in Acts 14:23, “Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust.
In his letter to the Romans, in 15:30-32, Paul wrote, “I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Pray that I may be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea and that the contribution I take to Jerusalem may be favorably received by the Lord’s people there, so that I may come to you with joy, by God’s will, and in your company, be refreshed.”
May I say, I also want you to pray for me. Keep on praying for me. Join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Which reminded me of the saying that goes, if you don’t like the pastor you have and want a new one, pray for the one you have so that he is renewed. It might be a little early in the game for me to say such a thing to you now. But you could file it away in case you need it a few years from now, or even a few months.
When Paul called himself an ambassador, it is not as if he thought he was the only one. In 2 Cor. 5:20 he declared, “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” If Paul says that all of us are ambassadors, and urged his fellow ambassadors to struggle with him in prayer, then it is obvious that we are most effective through our prayer work. “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer,” as it says in 1 Peter 3:12. As ambassadors of God’s Kingdom, we have a sort of a political authority, representing the King of the Universe, to bring to his attention matters that we cannot change by our will.
The importance of supplication as the work of the church in partnership with God is seen in Acts 8:15, “When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit.” God didn’t just do it. He requires our prayers in partnership with his will. Our prayer work makes our ministry fruitful. Note that I did not say prayer makes our ministry more fruitful. Without prayer, there will be no fruit, for fruit comes only as we cling to the vine, Jesus Christ is the vine. We cling to him by prayer.
Jesus of course encouraged us to do the work of prayer in several places. Matthew 5:44 says, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” His is repeated in Luke 6:28, “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” How else will they repent and become Christians? In fact, Jesus himself engaged in the work of prayer, as we can easily see in the high priestly prayer of John 17. And even now, Jesus is still interceding for us at the right hand of God in heaven, as we are told in Romans 8:34. He walked the earth for 33 years. He led his disciples for three years. He died and rose again in three days. And he has been praying for us ever since, for more than 2,000 years! That’s the importance of the work of supplication prayer.
Jesus also told us that prayer is very powerful! In Matthew 21:22, it says, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” This is repeated in Mark 11:24, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” But, of course, as we understand this, it is talking about prayers we ask that are in accord with His will, because we pray in his name, we should only ask for the things he would ask for, things that will extend the Kingdom and bring glory and honor to God. And in this the Spirit helps us. Sometimes we do not know for sure what we should ask for. This is especially the case when pain and suffering are involved and we join with all creation in groaning for the completion of our redemption. Paul says this plainly in Romans 8:26, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”
Paul regularly engaged in this prayer work. We have one example in Eph. 3:14-19, “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
And another in Col. 1: 9-13, “Since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
One more in 2 Thessalonians 1:11, We constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith.”
Paul also regularly asked his Christian brothers and sisters to do the work of prayer in his letters to the churches. One example is in 2 Cor. 1:10-11, “He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.”
And in Col. 4:2-4, he said, “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.
Paul also notes another believer in Colossians 4:12, “Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.” What would it look like in my life, to be known as someone who always wrestles in prayer for the church?
Paul’s letters are full of prayers for the saints! He knows the value of this work! James also, in his famous letter, gives specific instructions for the use of prayer in worship services, with the promise that “the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective,” as it says in James 5:15-16.
The work of supplication comes with God’s invitation to join him in the Kingdom building work. Rather than actually hearing God say we should join him in this type of work. The entire Bible assumes that we will! Jesus quoted the prophet, Isaiah 56:7, who actually was quoting Jesus who inspired him when he penned these words, “My house shall be a house of prayer.” When Solomon dedicated the temple, he specifically prayed more about the prayers that would be offered there than about the animal sacrifices that would be made. The sacrifices were offered as the doorway to open access to God, But the whole reason they wanted that was so they could pray to him and seek shalom with him. Now Jesus is the door. By his perfect sacrifice, once and for all, the way is open and no man can shut it. The prayers go on!
As we conclude this series on prayer, I hope you understand I have been laying a foundation, for our entire future ministry together to be founded in prayer. That’s the biggest rock in our lives. Remember about priorities? Put the big rock in first. Prayer goes in first, so that in all things we are seeking God’s will, and everything is covered in our prayers at all times, so that in every way we are led by the Lord who gives us his vision and strength for what we are to do together. Then we will rejoice, knowing that we helped God!
When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, because they asked him to, he gave them, and ultimately us, what we call the Lord’s prayer. But really it is the Christian’s prayer. It is not he prayer the Lord prays. He doesn’t need to ask forgiveness. But it is the prayer we are to pray. So, I prefer to identify this prayer as the Cristian’s prayer.
Jesus never meant for this prayer to be set in stone or an old-fashioned language so that it would sound more holy than ordinary speech. There was no King James English when he taught it to his disciples. And they didn’t ask him to teach them what to pray. They asked him to teach them how to pray. He gave them a framework, a basic outline that they could follow and fill out with details as the specific needs changed. The prayer that Jesus taught includes all four of the aspects of prayer we have been talking about these four weeks. Listen now, here it is in the given form, using more modern language for easy access.
Our Father, who is in Heaven, Your name is holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us away from temptation, and deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
And now here is an example of how it should be used in more specific prayer.
Our Father, who is in Heaven, Your name is holy. We adore you and praise you for your holiness and everyone should know about it. Your kingdom should come, and Your will should be done on earth as it is in Heaven. We are your loyal subjects, Lord, and we want to obey your every command, but we need your help. We need your power. For example, on this earth there are shady businesses that should not be doing what they are doing there. We ask you Lord to manifest your Kingdom in those places. Claim those territories as your own and remove those businesses or change what goes on in them to something more wholesome and good for our society.
But closer to home, help our homes look like embassies of your grace. May we live as good citizens of your kingdom and constantly use every opportunity to share the good news of your gracious reign and offer of forgiveness. Show us Lord, how to minister to the people around us who need to hear the gospel. Help us to reach the young people and lead them to you. Help us to be good disciples who know how to raise up the next generation of good disciples.
Give us this day our daily bread. Lord that means we look to you for our every need. You sustain us by your word. You also provide for our material needs. Everything we have is a gift from you and we look forward to your provision so that we can do your work. And, Lord, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. We confess that we are not perfect and do not obey you wholeheartedly in every detail of our lives. And we understand that we must be humble and willing to forgive and overlook offenses committed against us because this demonstrates that we understand the magnitude of your forgiving grace towards us.
At the same time Lord, we again plead for your power to be effective in our lives. We need you to lead us away from temptation, and deliver us from the evil one. For it’s all your Kingdom. We have no power but yours and every good thing that happens or exists is to bring glory to your name only, forever, Oh Lord. Amen.
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