The Lord's Prayer

By Jeff Lucas

It must be the most famous prayer in the world, and we know it as "The Lord’s Prayer"—the Paternoster of earlier days.I Jesus taught it to His disciples, and so it has been passed on. But what does it actually teach us? What are its founding principles, and why is it so vital? What does it mean to call God "our Father"? Aren’t the heavens a long way off? And if we want God’s name to be holy, how does that work? Jeff Lucas takes time to work through this "model of prayer" in depth, and gives us plenty to reflect and act upon, personally, and to pray for, globally. He looks at the topic of prayer itself—one so important to us as Christians yet so hard in practice for so many—and stresses that this is the community prayer: this is for us as a body, not just as individuals. Whether it is asking for our daily bread, forgiving and seeking forgiveness, or exploring what it means for God’s will to be done, these Bible Daily notes are food for the brain and sustenance for the spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David C Cook
• Release date: Jan 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9780830780877

Jeff Lucas

Jeff Lucas holds a teaching post at Timberline Church, Fort Collins. He is author of 18 books, and a highly popular speaker. He writes a monthly column for Christianity magazine and regular Bible notes for CWR.

Book preview

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. When You Pray

2. What’s the Point?

3. Prayer Is Not Easy

4. Why Is Prayer So Hard?

5. Some Jewish Perspectives on Prayer

6. Not All Prayer Is Good

7. Our Father

8. A Radical Way to Talk to God

9. A Father Like No Other

10. It Doesn’t Come Naturally

11. Our Father, the Corporate

12. More on Shared Prayer Together

13. Our Adoptive Father

14. Our Father in the Heavens

15. God with Us

16. Out There and Here Too

17. With Us on Sundays

18. With Us on Mondays Too

19. A Prayer

20. Hallowed Be Your Name

21. God as Middle C

22. Unchanging, Holy God

23. Awesome God

24. Holy Other Yet Wholly Yet Near

25. Becoming Holy Like Him

26. The Kingdom Is a Revolution

27. The Main Message of Jesus: The Kingdom and God’s Will

28. Passionate but Wrong

29. The Kingdom Calls for Surrender

30. The Kingdom and the Church Are Not the Same

31. The Kingdom Is a Party

32. The Kingdom Is Yet to Come

33. Everything Is Not Inevitable: Your Will Be Done

34. Kingdom Optimism

35. Our Daily Bread

36. Give Us … Asking for Ourselves

37. Asking Daily—and Dependency

38. Forgive Us Our Sins

39. Not Arrived, but Journeying in Grace

40. Not Free at Last

41. The Accuser

42. As We Forgive

43. Bitterness

44. Forgiving as a Journey

45. What Forgiveness Is Not

46. The Benefits of Forgiving

47. Liberating Forgiveness

48. Unforgettable

49. Forgiveness Can Change the World

50. Prayer and Forgiving

51. Don’t Lead Us into Temptation

52. For Yours Is the Kingdom

Notes

Introduction

It’s usually called the Lord’s prayer, although some bristle at that. They insist it should really be called the disciples’ prayer, because it’s a model of prayer that Jesus taught His friends and followers. Some say that the real Lord’s prayer is actually found in John 17, where Jesus interceded for us. Whatever we call it, it’s one of the best-known passages of Scripture. Some say it should be used as a piece of liturgy; others say it contains the essential elements of prayer. Surely it is both.

In this study, we will consider not only Jesus’ teaching on prayer, but also look at the themes He highlighted in that prayer of all prayers.

As we begin, let’s pray (seems like a sensible idea considering the subject!) that we will all grow and experience authentic relationships with God in our everyday lives. Let’s take this amazing resource the Lord has given us and get the utmost from it. Let’s appreciate it to the full.

And thanks for joining me!

Day 1

When You Pray

Matthew 26:36–46

Luke 11:2–4

God wants us to pray. We’ll spend some of our time over the next couple of months examining just how we should pray, and hopefully we’ll find some practical hints to improve our prayer lives. But let’s first establish that God sees prayer as a priority so it should be our priority too. Jesus assumed those who love and follow Him would pray, prefacing His teaching about prayer by saying when you pray and not if you pray. (He also viewed fasting and giving in the same way.) And He didn’t just teach the importance of prayer; we find Him personally prioritizing it.

In a life packed with clamoring crowds and endless demands, He would often rise early to retreat and spend time in prayer (Mark 1:35). Faced with the greatest challenge of His life (His trial and execution), Jesus chose to spend His final hours in prayer, and desperately wanted His friends to join Him in that vigil. The New Testament is crammed with exhortations and instructions about prayer, including a call from the apostle Paul that encourages us to pray continually (1 Thess. 5:17) and multiple requests for prayer (Eph. 6:18–20; Col. 4:2–4; 2 Thess. 3:1–2). And the Bible ends with the prayers of the saints (God’s people, which includes you and me!) rising up to God, along with the smoke of the incense (Rev. 8:4

KJV

), showing that our praying is part of our worship.

As we’ll see, prayer is not easy. But it is a significant, and essential, element of the walk of faith.

Pray: Lord, I hear You calling me to pray. During the next