I am going to use for the next several blogs verbatim the content of a short book I have written on prayer. It is titled, After This Manner Pray, and is based of the Lord’s Prayer. For this blog, I am sharing the Preface to the book.
Other than John 3:16, the one passage of Scripture that is probably known by more Christians than any other is the model for prayer, which the Lord Jesus Christ gave to us as recorded in Matthew 6:9-13. It is called The Lord’s Prayer, even though some would prefer to call it The Model Prayer. When Jesus said “after this manner therefore pray ye” (Matt. 6:9a), the Lord was providing us with a prayer intended as a guide for praying. His intent was not for us to pray verbatim and recite over and over again the sixty-four words from The King James Version Bible, which has become commonplace.
I have been in various settings, such as civic group and fraternal meetings, a pre-game or post-game athletic team locker room, a school classroom or assembly, even in church worship services, where The Lord’s Prayer was prayed before beginning an event or activity, to end an event or activity, or as part of a worship service. I even have a penny, stretched beyond its normal size, on which The Lord’s Prayer is printed. The sixty-four words or so, which have been recited in prayer countless times since they were first spoken and recorded, certainly stand alone as an example of powerful biblical praying. But, again, Jesus stated before uttering those oft-repeated words that they were a model for how to pray.
In After This Manner Pray, The Lord’s Prayer has been used as a pattern to build upon phrase by phrase. The Lord’s Prayer contains six distinct phrases, which address five different subjects. Those subjects are praise, personal priorities, God’s provision, forgiveness for our sins and those who sin against us, and protection. It is significant that the Lord began the prayer with praise and ended the prayer with praise. Perhaps, we should spend at least a third of our prayer time praising the Lord for Who He is and for His direction, provision, correction, forgiveness, protection, and manifold blessings.
In After This Manner Pray, each phrase of The Lord’s Prayer has been expanded upon and personalized, using other Scripture passages addressing the theme of each phrase, to provide a guide for praying that will increase your personal time in prayer and the scope of your prayer targets and concerns. As you use After This Manner Pray as a personal prayer guide, other prayer concerns will come to your mind beyond those provided in this book, which are personal and applicable for your life. That is when the Lord’s Prayer becomes a model for praying like Jesus prayed and not just a recitation to pray verbatim over and over again, which was not the Lord’s intention when he used those words as an example of how to pray. Although we always have the omnipresence of our Lord with us, the model for prayer that Jesus gave us exhorts us to acknowledge God’s presence when we begin to pray.
So, the emphasis of Chapter One is praising in His presence. Chapter Two keys upon putting first things first in seeking to get in line with God’s will for one’s life. Asking the Lord to provide all your needs and to provide for the needs of others is the prayer topic for Chapter Three. Chapter Four deals with asking God’s forgiveness for your sins, which have been paid in full for the Christian. Praying for the Lord’s protection is the focus of Chapter Five. Chapter Six emphasizes praise again, in praising out His power, as you have spent time with God praying for yourself and for others, according to His Word and His will, with the confidence that you are in tune and in step with what God desires to accomplish (1 John 5:14-15).
It has been said that prayer is not so much to get Heaven to move on earth’s behalf as it is to get earth to move on Heaven’s behalf. Jesus said, “After this manner, pray,” when he recited what we know as The Lord’s Prayer. How powerful that model prayer is when we use it to guide us in prayer. We will be doing our part to “get earth to move on Heaven’s behalf” because we have gotten ourselves in tune and in step with the spiritual waveband and frequency of Heaven.