Studies In The Kingdom Of God

Volume 1: Chapter 1: The Importance Of Responding To The Influences Of God

"Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name, 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 debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever." Mathew 6:9-13 (emphasis mine)

"Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him." 1Corinthians 2:9

These are two wonderful passages of scripture. One, we know as The Lord's Prayer. The other is taken from 1Corinthians 2, where Paul is expounding on the wisdom of God, which He displayed through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus and then expounded on, further, through the Holy Spirit. Both of these scriptures are indicative of the tremendous blessings and inheritance we have been given by our heavenly Father, as believers in Jesus and heirs of the Kingdom of God through Jesus.

After following Jesus, observing His lifestyle and participating with Him in His ministry, the disciples recognized that Jesus was a praying man and, even more significant, that God answered His prayers. As a result, they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. They wanted to see the same results from their prayers that Jesus saw from His.

As Jesus began to teach them about prayer, modeling it for them, He started with the phrase, "Our Father." This phrase was not some ritual introduction to a formal prayer Jesus prayed every day, hoping that His Father heard it. Nor was it part of a spiritual formula to coax the Father to do something for Him. Jesus knew who He was praying to and He had established an intimate relationship and spiritual connection with His Father, as He grew from a small boy into an adult.

In this phrase, "Our Father," Jesus acknowledged His relationship with His Father and called on this relationship for the purpose of personal interaction, fellowship, and co-laboring with Him, as Jesus engaged in His daily activities. Not only was Jesus recognizing His relationship with the Father, He was acknowledging the fact (by saying "Our Father") that this relationship with God as Father was available to all who pursued this same intimate relationship and spiritual connection.

In His model prayer, Jesus continued by making specific requests of the Father, not as "scatter shots", hoping to mention one that happened to "hit" on something that was already on the Father's agenda for that day. Jesus interacted and communicated with the Father concerning what He needed, as the Father's Kingdom representative to the earth and to humanity, as well as acknowledging the Father's character qualities and Jesus' devotion to His Father's will and purposes. Jesus' prayers communicated His love, honor and respect for the Father and what the Father means to Him, in His personal experience.

Effective prayer is not about saying the right words in the right way at the right time. It's about engaging in and expressing the realities of an intimate relationship that has been and continues to be developed over time, and drawing upon these relationship realities when the need or opportunity calls for it. Jesus modeled what prayer was to be like – not in word only but in heart attitude and in personal experience.

When we read or say the Lord's Prayer and we finish the phrase, "...and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil", we tend to "coast" to the end of the prayer. We say or read the remaining words as if they are simply the formal closing to the prayer because (we assume) we have just completed the most important part. But, if we look carefully at what Jesus said following His requests, we discover that He expresses what He believes to be the foundational reality for why He knows His prayers will be answered.