PRAY A GOD-CENTERED PRAYER
It was time.
I was fifteen years old and a new believer. Spiritually mature people were encouraging me to read the Bible and to pray. I thought, “I’m ready. I’m going to pray!”
A quick brainstorm gave me four things to pray about, so I sat down and started praying. I talked to God about each item on my list - fighting off getting distracted or bored - and then realized … I didn’t have anything else to pray about. I wondered how long I had been praying. Four minutes. It was only four minutes, and, honestly, at least a minute or two had been more mind-wandering than focused praying. I thought about praying some more but didn’t know what else to say.
I felt like a failure at prayer.
I had heard stories of praying for thirty or sixty minutes but couldn’t even pray for five. I thought I’m just not like the people who are encouraging me to pray.
You may struggle to pray. You feel like you should pray more. It seems like you can’t go a minute without your mind getting distracted. You wonder if you’re even doing it right.
Do you think Jesus’ disciples felt like failures at prayer? Perhaps the thought never occurred to them until they started following Jesus and watching him pray. The way he prayed was different. He had a connection with God they didn’t seem to. His prayers had a power beyond theirs’. It was inspiring. They wanted what he had.
That’s why one day, they asked Jesus, “Would you teach us how to pray?” He responded by giving them what we now call “the Lord’s Prayer.”
This, then, is how you should pray:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one. (Matthew 6:9-13)
Jesus taught them, and us, how to pray, which is like Michael Jordan teaching you how to play basketball. Yes, please! Or Gordon Ramsey teaching you how to cook. Yes, just don’t yell at me, please!
I want to focus on just the first few verses, on three phrases Jesus gave us to guide how we start our prayers.
Our Father in Heaven
Jesus starts, “Our Father in Heaven.”
“Father” can be a complicated word for a lot of us, but in God, we have a perfect father. A father who is there for you, cares for you, and wants to protect and provide for you. He’s also a father who invites you to talk to him anytime about everything.
Jesus is telling us to remember who you’re talking to when you pray. Pray to God like a child who has a loving father. You have his attention. You don’t have to impress him or earn his affection. You don’t need all the answers because he has them.
Hallowed Be Your Name
It’s the fourth word of this prayer where things get weird. Hallowed? What’s hallowed?
Hallow simply means to honor and treat with the highest respect. After starting by calling God “Father” and reminding ourselves that we are his kids, we continue by praising God for who he is, that he is holy, majestic, glorious, and worthy of all our honor and respect.
When you pray, you can say the words Jesus did, “hallowed be your name,” or you can praise God for specific characteristics of his – perhaps that he is all-knowing, or all-powerful, that he is sinless or gracious, compassionate or just. Or you can thank him for what he has done in your life. Give him the gratitude and respect he deserves.
Let me pause here and ask: How do you typically begin your prayers? Most of us start by asking God to meet our needs. We may spend the entirety of our prayer time presenting God with a laundry list of needs we need him to meet.
We can ask God for his help. In fact, we are encouraged to “cast all your cares on him because he cares about you” (1 Peter 5:7).
But Jesus doesn’t begin his model prayer with requests. He starts with God. Starting with God reminds us who it is that we’re talking to. Jesus’ prayer begins with worship, and prayer is always at its best when it begins in worship!
Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done
Jesus continues, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Have you ever thought about what that means? It is a beautiful, dangerous, life-altering prayer.
Why?
Because instead of praying for your dreams to come true, you’re praying for God’s dreams.
When you pray this prayer...
You’re asking God to make his dreams your dreams.
You’re asking for God’s will to become the main attraction in your life.
You’re asking God to use your life so that what things look like up in heaven will increasingly become the way things look down here.
Can we be honest about our prayers?
If someone listened in on our prayers, I’m afraid they’d hear something more like, “God, may my kingdom come. May my will be done.”
No one wants to admit that. No Christian store is going to start selling bumper stickers, “I pray for what I want, not what God wants, and I’m proud of it!” It’d be embarrassing to confess, but we tend to want what we want and pray that our dreams will come true.
But what if praying mostly for your will to be done and your dreams to come true makes your life small and self-serving? What if God has something so much more for you, but you’re missing it because you’re not praying the prayer Jesus taught you, the prayer for God’s dream?
Jesus is inviting us to pray bigger prayers.
“Father, bring justice.”
“Father, restore families.”
“Father, end hunger.”
“Father, protect children.”
“Father, rescue the lost.”
“Father, comfort the hurting.”
“Father, lower the divorce rate.”
“Father, grow your church.”
“Father, do in my life whatever you think is best.”
With this prayer, we’re asking for God’s dreams to come true, for his will to be done precisely as he wants it, and for evil to recede and righteousness to triumph!
Praying like this means I will, at times, have to lay down my will in favor of his will.
This week, I had to do exactly that. I had to pray, “God, your kingdom come, your will be done.” I’ll be honest – in this particular instance, I didn’t want to. I wanted to pray, “God, my will be done. Because what I’m praying about matters to me. Would you allow it to happen the way I want it?” But I realized I had to let go of that piece of my dream and let God know, “I want your will more than I want mine. I believe what you want is bigger and better than what I want, and regardless, I trust you.”
If that’s hard for you, I get it. I’ve discovered that the more I grow in my relationship with God, the more I find myself wanting his will more than my own. But I am not all the way there yet. I often have to go back repeatedly and surrender afresh until it sticks.
THE ORDER OF PRAYER MATTERS
If you keep reading Jesus’ prayer, you see the next thing he gets to is ... personal needs.
Jesus isn’t saying not to pray for our needs. I think he’s telling us: the order matters. When you start with who God is, why he’s worthy of your praise, and his will for your life and the world, then move on to your personal needs, you’ll find your prayers, and maybe even your life, will start to make more sense and fall into order.
Too many people experience a shallow prayer life and perhaps a shallow relationship with God because their prayers are entirely self-focused.
Jesus wants to move us from a self-centered prayer life to a God-centered prayer life.
God has so much more for us. I know I didn’t begin to experience it until I learned how Jesus taught us to pray and discovered that my prayer time with God could include silence – where I just focus on his presence with me, praying the Scriptures, and surrendering my life to God piece by piece, and going for a walk with Jesus where I’m quiet and just listen for his voice.
As I began to go deeper in my prayer life, my relationship with God experienced a new depth, intimacy, and beauty.
That’s available to you, too, and it begins with you praying a God-centered prayer, like Jesus.
Questions…
What keeps you from praying more often than you do?
How does Jesus’ prayer help or encourage you?
Why do you think Jesus wants us to start our prayers by praising God?
Additional Resources:
Here is an ebook I wrote entitled HOW TO START THE YEAR IN PRAYER & FASTING that you can download and print from home. https://bradjenkins.me/resources
Here is a blog post I wrote entitled HOW TO SPEND A DAY IN PRAYER https://bradjenkins.me/blog/how-to-spend-a-day-in-prayer
Join me and others on the teaching team at Anthem Church for a five-week online track entitled HOW TO PRAY as part of the Anthem School of Discipleship https://weareanthem.church/schoolofdiscipleship
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*If this has been helpful, please send me a message and let me know. And please share this post with others who could benefit. My writing aims to help people enjoy a vibrant relationship with Jesus, and it is an honor to be on this journey with you. To receive weekly emails, subscribe at www.bradjenkins.me