The Lord’s Prayer

by Courtney Jacob
Jun 9, 2023

The Lord’s Prayer may arguably be the best-known prayer in the world. For generations, Christians and churches around the world have recited it in solitude and together during corporate worship services. It is often one of the first prayers children learn. Through this prayer, Jesus teaches us about prayer in general and also communicates valuable truths about God and us. In our Groundwork series, “The Lord’s Prayer,” we’ll study each petition of the Lord’s Prayer and the Scriptures that help us understand their meaning. We’ll discuss what we’re professing or asking when we pray each petition, why the order of the prayer matters, how it aligns our character with God’s, and how our faith is nurtured each time we pray this prayer on our own and in community with our fellow believers.

How to Pray

Prayer is a common and essential Christian practice and an important part of our faith life. Yet, it is not uncommon for believers to wonder how to pray. Whether we’re new to the faith or have grown up in it, we long to know what is important to include in our prayers and even what we should say. We want to be sure God hears our prayers. 

Jesus Christ’s disciples felt like this too and in the gospel of Luke, they ask Jesus to teach them how to pray (Luke 11). The gospel of Matthew also includes Jesus’ teaching on prayer (Matthew 6) within a series of teachings we call his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). In fact, we call it the Lord’s Prayer precisely because it is the prayer our Lord Jesus Christ taught his disciples and modeled for us. 

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus demonstrates a rightly ordered prayer and the priorities of a heart focused on God. It contains an opening phrase, five petitions or requests, and a closing. By studying Jesus’ prayer we learn how to pray in a way that both honors God and reflects what we believe. Jesus offers us a prayer that we can both pray and use as a model for our other prayers.

Prayer Changes Us

The prayer Jesus teaches his disciples is simple and relatively short, but it communicates valuable theology that nurtures our faith as we speak the prayer before God. Each phrase and petition of the Lord’s Prayer is consistent with what we learn in other parts of Scripture about God and his ways. Studying those Scriptures broadens our understanding of each petition and helps us understand what we’re asking God for and why. 

Join us as we study each petition of the Lord’s Prayer to remember again who God is and what he has done, to learn how to align ourselves with God, and to grow in our Christlikeness. 

Study the Lord’s Prayer

Whether you’re learning to pray for the first time or you’ve been praying the Lord’s Prayer for years, I invite you to nurture your prayer life through our Groundwork series, “The Lord’s Prayer”:

...and together we’ll grow in faith as we learn how and why Jesus’ taught us to pray the way he did in the Lord’s Prayer.

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The Lord's Prayer

 

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