How to Pray the Lord's Prayer, Part Two of Six

I heard a sermon on prayer from a seminary professor who said that prayer is basically asking God for stuff. I think he's right,  but the problem is that most of us ask God for the wrong things.

If we’re honest, we treat prayer as a wish-list, a mixture of needs and wants, often centered around our comfort and security. Jesus’ pattern for prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, is like other prayers in that it does consist of a series of requests.

But what makes Jesus' prayer so different, and revolutionary, is that He teaches us to pray for what we really need. Last time I mentioned an acrostic summary of His prayer: P-R-A-Y-E-R. (I included a copy at the end of this post.) The P stands for “Praise Him,”and is actually the first request.

When we pray “Hallowed be Your name,” we are asking God to help us praise Him  Our request is that He might enable us to set apart, hallow, His name in our lives. The NET Bible puts it, “May your name be honored.”

Today’s post is about the second letter of the acrostic: R, which stands for “Render Allegiance.” Jesus teaches us to pray: "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." This, too, is a request. We ask that the Lord would rule over us and that we would bend to His will, rather than our own.

This is not a light request. Submission to God, saying yes to Him ahead of time, when you definitely do not know the specifics of His plan, is really the essence of the Christian journey.

• It's what our Savior modeled in the Garden: "Yet not what I will, but what you will" (Mark 14:36).
• It is the command of Scripture. Submit yourselves therefore to God (James 4:7a). 
• Yielding ourselves to the Lord is how we grow in Christlikeness: ...present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness (Romans 6:13b).

The kingdom of God isn't just a future reign. It's how we're to live right now, under the rule of the eternal God. Why pray about it? Because it's a lesson that is very hard, but absolutely essential to learn. It is the lesson of all lessons.  

Praying that we'll learn how to submit, that His reign and will would have their way in our lives is not easy. But submission is another word for trust. "Lord, teach me to trust You. Have Your way way in my life."

FOR NEXT TIME – prAyer (Ask for daily needs)