1. The Model Prayer
1
The Model Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil,
For thine is the kingdom,
And the power, and the glory forever.
Amen.
A thoughtful consideration of the words of this prayer will help us to put our minds in the right frame before we begin knocking on God’s door for guidance in some particular matter. This is the model prayer Jesus gave his disciples when they asked him to teach them to pray.
Twenty years have passed since I wrote the other chapters of this book; twenty years of seeking to be a more faithful follower of the Shepherd. He has been very patient with me, reviewing again and again lessons I should have learned half a century ago. “How dull you are!” Jesus said to the two whom he met on the road to Emmaus. “How slow to believe!” I am like those two. Coleridge said that many truths are commonly considered “so true as to lose all the powers of Truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul.”
The Lord’s Prayer, I’m afraid, lay bedridden in the dormitory of my soul for a good many years. My father always ended his family prayer after breakfast with the words, “In the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray,” whereupon all of us, down to the littlest who could speak, joined in saying the Lord’s Prayer. Children memorize easily and we rattled it off without the least thought of the words, but my father understood the wisdom of teaching it (and hymns and Bible verses as well) long before we could appreciate the powers of the truths we parroted. The older I get, the more I see in that simple prayer and the more I use it (often many times a day), for I have come to see that it comprises all that really matters in life.
All? Yes, I really think it comprises all and therefore furnishes the context for all prayers, including, “Lead me, Lord. Show me what to do.” Asking God to guide us is part of our daily prayers, but when we face what we call “big” decisions, we are more keenly aware of our need of a word from him. It is easy at such times to forget the pattern Jesus gave us. The urgent need of the moment obscures greater matters.
Many find that it helps to place our little prayers in the grand perspective of who God is and what his kingdom and his will require. Might it not be a good thing, before we launch into the subject of God’s guidance, to do just that?
Our Father
When we address God we address the Creator of the Universe, the Ancient of Days, the Lord of Hosts, the Mighty God. The thought of him should inspire awe and reverence. But he is also the Everlasting Father. Jesus taught his disciples to call him our Father. If we trust the Son who died for us and come to the Father aware of our need of his grace, we may take our position before him as a child, not knowing what is best for us but coming and asking to be shown what to do. It is merely a request, not a demand, and can be granted or refused. Surely any father would look tenderly on a child’s desire to be shown what to do. He will show him.
Our Father God is love, essential love, and therefore cannot possibly desire for his child anything but what is best.
He is all-wise and therefore knows just what that best is.
He is all-powerful and therefore can give what he wants to give.
His timing, his way of showing, and the thing shown may not be at all according to the child’s expectation. But never mind. The Father will give all the help his child needs, will take him by the hand, and the child will learn.
Who Art in Heaven
The Father to whom we come is in heaven. We are on earth, where there are so many divergent pathways, such potential for choosing the wrong one. The mystery of prayer brings the finite into contact with the infinite, the temporal with the eternal, the seen with the unseen. This is a great comfort when we are asking to be shown what to do, for while we look at our own small world and the particular perplexity that brings us to the Father’s knee, our minds fogged with doubts, anxieties, and frightening pictures of what the future may hold, he can see the end from the beginning. He is like the captain on the bridge who can see what the man in the engine room cannot. The far horizons, the positions of the stars, the direction of the wind are all known to the one who is in charge. Our heavenly Father knows every inch of our earthly journey, sees it whole, has been over the course himself, and says to us, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness”
Hallowed Be Thy Name
The modern mind can’t make head or tail of this petition. Hallowed means holy. Isn’t the name of God holy, perfectly holy, as holy as it can ever be? Why pray that it be hallowed? The answer may startle and humble us. God’s love, longing for his children’s participation with him by prayer, gives us a part to play in the hallowing (the making holy) of his name here on earth. The Father actually seeks worshipers, those who will worship him in spirit and in truth.
So this is an act of adoration. It is putting oneself at his feet, an essential preparation for all right action, a prayer that he may be glorified, remembering that we were created to be for “the praise of the glory of his grace.” We finite creatures? Yes. All creatures were created for his glory: aardvarks, shrimps, great horned owls. But not all creatures pray—at least in the manner in which we men and women are meant to pray. By choosing to pray, we refer ourselves and all that concerns us—struggles, failures, hopes, dreams, relationships, work, perplexities, helplessnesses—to that holy name, the name that denotes the reality of God.
The next question is how? How shall we “hallow” his name? All the petitions that follow answer the question.
Thy Kingdom Come
Here we raise our sights far above our personal wants and ask for the realization of his kingdom, not our own. The matter for which we seek divine guidance we must now try to see in the light of God’s kingdom, that stupendous realm of perfect order, goodness, light, love, peace, and joy. Down here on this fallen and broken planet, the planet we can’t help but feel we have pretty well used up, it is hard to imagine God’s kingdom coming, but we have been promised that it will, and for that coming we lift up our voice in prayer. We are telling our Father that that is what we want more than anything else. That is the real object of our prayer: his rule and reign and right ordering of all that is wrong.
As we put ourselves on his side, we hallow his name. As we lay our individual prayers before him, we do so recognizing that the answer has to fit into the coming of the kingdom and the holiness of the name, which means that the answer may be quite other than we suppose. The kingdom of God is the place where all is in perfect order, nothing is out of place, because it is the place where his will is always done. Therefore, when we ask for the coming of his kingdom, we are asking for the doing of his will.
Thy Will Be Done on Earth As It Is in Heaven
This is the point at which earth and heaven meet, the point at which my will must come into harmony with God’s. Anything I am asking that is not in harmony with the way things are done in heaven has got to go. If in the integrity of my heart I speak the words, Thy will be done, I must be willing, if the answer requires it, that my will be undone. It is a prayer of commitment and relinquishment. The cost to Jesus of bringing his Father’s kingdom on earth was the Cross of Calvary. Facing that cost, he sweated in Gethsemane: “O my Father, if it be possible . . .” Though his human flesh shrank at the prospect of death, he surrendered his own will to the will of the Father.
And thus he teaches us to pray for the coming of the kingdom in the only way the kingdom can possibly come: through the doing of the Father’s will. There is no other way. This was Jesus’s sole purpose in coming to earth. As we learn to live more intimately with him, it will become our sole object in life, and in every act that accords with his will, we are also hallowing his name.
He calls us not to passivity but to the dynamic self-abandonment that commitment to his kingdom means. This is the great prayer of the Church through the ages, Thy will be done, offered in company with the unseen throng of apostles, prophets, martyrs, and the Church throughout all the world.
To me it is a thrilling thing, when I stop to think about it, that when I pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, I actually join, spiritually, that great company in heaven that ceaselessly prays about what is happening on earth. All of us are given the unspeakable privilege of offering ourselves as living sacrifices every time we repeat these words, on earth, that is, in me, in my house, my work, my life, as it is in heaven. When I try to picture the scene, I think of the words of Bishop Reginald Heber’s hymn:
The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar;
Who follows in His train?
Who best can drink His cup of woe
Triumphant over pain,
Who patient bears His cross below—
He follows in His train.
The martyr first, whose eagle eye
Could pierce beyond the grave,
Who saw his Master in the sky,
And called on Him to save;
Like Him, with pardon on His tongue,
In midst of mortal pain,
He prayed for them that did the wrong:
Who follows in His train?
A glorious band, the chosen few
On whom the Spirit came,
Twelve valiant saints, their hope they knew,
And mocked the cross and flame;
They met the tyrant’s brandished steel,
The lion’s gory mane;
They bowed their necks the death to feel,
Who follows in their train?
A noble army, men and boys,
The matron and the maid,
Around the Saviour’s throne rejoice,
In robes of light arrayed.
They climbed the steep ascent of heaven
Through peril, toil, and pain:
O God, to us may grace be given
To follow in their train.
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
With this petition we come down to the bottom of the stairs, as it were, down here where we live, the world of human needs and burdens and sins and limitations. The humble business of ordinary food and ordinary necessities reminds us of our utter dependence on God. We could not draw the next breath if it were not for his giving us life and breath. So we make our Declaration of Dependence in these simple words. When we look at them in contrast to the spiritual things prayed for first, they seem trivial. But the Lord taught us to pray this way. To him nothing is trivial or important, nothing small or great, for he is all and fills all in all. He will not have us imagining that material things are in themselves unworthy but are, in fact, his gifts and meant to be received gladly and humbly from his hand.
He made us human. He made us to need what he gives. He tells us to ask for it. Bread or something like it is the most basic human need. But I think we may include all human needs under this heading. Guidance is one of them.
I like to picture the Lord handing me a platter at the beginning of each new day. On it are the things he has chosen as best for me, and my prayer for daily bread is answered. My part is to receive whatever he gives. Guidance for a decision that need not be final until next Wednesday may require one small move or commitment today. I accept that and act on it without haggling with God because he has not yet granted me all the information I’m itching for. Perhaps patience is his gift of bread for today, or quietness, or the gift of uncertainty, that I may rest in his love, confident that when the time is ripe, the guidance will be clear.
Forgive Us Our Trespasses
This is my acknowledgment that I am not only human but sinful and in need of cleansing. Evelyn Underhill says our trespasses are our “voluntary share in the world’s sinfulness.” My shortcomings and excesses, debts and trespasses, my meanness and fear and envy, my selfishness of whatever sort—all these have their deleterious effect on those I love, those I live or work with, and on the world in general.
It seems that God must often delay the answer to our prayers for special guidance because we have already chosen a path of disobedience in that or some other matter. It is not reasonable to expect to be shown the right way when we deliberately continue in what we know is a wrong one. We must repent, which means to turn around. Go back to the point of departure. Then pray to be shown the path of God’s will.
As We Forgive Those Who Trespass against Us
In these words, we agree to receive from God exactly the measure of forgiveness we mete out to those who have hurt us. If we hope for a clean slate from him, we must forgive from our hearts any who have wronged us, even if the wrong seems utterly unforgivable.
Have I been abused? Forgive me my trespasses in the same way I forgive the one who has abused me.
Have I been lied about? Forgive me as I have forgiven the liar.
Has someone cheated, abandoned, broken faith with, insulted, or violated me? Have I forgiven him from the depths of my heart? Lord, forgive me in the same measure.
If I cannot honestly say I have given the offender a perfectly clean slate, I must recognize the impossibility of God’s forgiving me that which I insist upon retaining. Hatred and resentment are the very gates of hell. Because he is love, he will not, for very love, contribute to my self-destruction.
How shall I expect God to guide me if I refuse to follow his way? Only the merciful are promised mercy.
Lead Us Not into Temptation
This seems for some a puzzling prayer. Why would God lead us into temptation? We read in Exodus 13:17–18 (NIV) that he did not take Israel through the Philistine country after Pharaoh had let them go, though that would have been the shortest way. “If they face war,” he said, “they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” Here is a case where God knew the temptation would be too great for them to bear. He has promised never to allow us to be tempted beyond our powers of endurance, and he wants us to side with him by praying.
Remember, once again, the Lord’s Prayer was given to the apostles, that select band of godly men. They, even they, must remember their weakness. They must not seek heroics. The psalmist wrote, “Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not.”
Temptation is not in itself a sin. It is meant by “our ancient foe,” Satan, to cause us to sin. God’s purpose in allowing it is to test our faith, and his Word even tells us to welcome it, to count it pure joy, for that reason. We read that after Jesus was baptized, he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for the express purpose of being tempted by the devil. Led to be tempted! But we are not to ask for that—again, no inflated ideas of our own heroic strength. We are weak and easily tempted to sin, so we ask the opposite. We pray for deliverance from temptation, for we might succumb.
Deliver Us from Evil
Uppermost in my mind when I pray this is that I may be purified of my own evil tendencies. Also I hope to be delivered from the evil of others. I cast myself completely on the Lord, trusting in the Absolute Love. He is my hope and my strength. I know no other ground.
Sometimes he hurts us. Hurt is not the same as harm. “There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling” is an Old Testament promise. Yet the Bible tells many stories of what is humanly called disaster striking God’s own people. A careful reading of the biography of Joseph shows many terrible things happening to a good man, but the outcome reveals the care and love of a sovereign Lord throughout. Corrie ten Boom’s godly father died in a concentration camp during Hitler’s reign, and her sister starved to death, yet Corrie never doubted the love or the loving purpose of God. They were not delivered from the evil of the Nazis, but they were kept—kept in God’s arms, kept in peace. No harm, in the eternal sense, ever touched them. In his time the pattern of his working will be unfolded. We can pray with perfect confidence, “Deliver us from evil,” knowing that he may hurt us, but he will never harm us.
“Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me: thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me: thy mercy, O Lord, endureth for ever.”
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.