Prayer is absolutely essential to a thriving church. In John 15:5 Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” Let that sink in—apart from Jesus you can do NOTHING. Sure, you can go to work, walk the dog, eat your dinner, wash the dishes, but nothing of eternal value; nothing that will matter into eternity. The only way that happens is if we are abiding in Christ, and one of the most basic things that we can do as an act of abiding in Christ, is to pray! As Martin Luther once said, “to be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing”.  Abiding in Christ through prayer is like filling our spiritual lungs with oxygen, giving us spiritual life, that we might bear much fruit. 

Focusing on the importance of prayer quickly leads us to the next question: how do we pray? We often speak of prayer as if it is self-explanatory. Just pray! How hard can it be? But anyone who has ever sat down to pray knows that after about 32 seconds the mind needs help; a focus, a plan, a framework of some kind. Numerous such plans have been put forward over the years: F.A.C.T.S.,  A.C.T.S., P.R.A.Y.,  A.W.C.I.P.A. and there is nothing particularly wrong with any of these, but I have recently come across a new model put forward by Daniel Henderson. ‘New’ might not be the right way to describe it though, because fundamentally it is simply a fresh look at the very old words of Jesus as He answered the request of His disciples: ‘teach us to pray’ (Luke 11:1) and if these are Jesus’ instructions, we ought to pay attention. 

If you have been to any corporate prayer gathering at Redemption in the last few years you have prayed according to this model, whether you knew it or not, but I want you know it! I want us to be united together, praying according to Jesus’ outline for prayer as we gather for corporate prayer, and I would also encourage you to commit this to memory or write it down and put it in your Bible and let this shape the way you pray in private. 

The disciples asked Jesus ‘teach us to pray’ and Jesus answered, ‘when you pray, pray like this.” He then gave them what we know today as The Lord’s Prayer. The shorter version is in Luke 11, the fuller and better-known version is recorded in Matthew 6:9–13:

Pray then like this:

“Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil. 

First notice that Jesus teaches them to say, “OUR Father…” and not “MY Father”. J esus assumed His church would pray together. Not that we don’t pray individually, absolutely we do, but Jesus taught that the church would pray gathered together. 

Now, I do not think it was ever Jesus’ intent that we would just memorize and repeat His prayer verbatim. He says pray LIKE this. This is a model for how to pray in general. The first thing to see is that Jesus’ prayer breaks down in two parts pretty clearly. The first half is all about God and the second half is about us. Our prayers should have two distinct movements. The simplest structure of Jesus’ prayer is this: 

He is worthy,

We are needy

That order is significant. Learning to worship in prayer, learning to seek His face in prayer before anything else, is one of the great needs of the church today. That is something we desperately need to learn and to prioritize. Only once we have sought Him as our ultimate good should we then turn to our lesser earthly needs. Yet, we can be even more specific as we look more closely at the Lord’s Prayer. Those two movements (He is worthy, we are needy) break down further into 4 movements. 

1) REVERENCE –Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name

All prayer should begin with worship. Worship God for who He is, for His character and nature, for His grace, gifts and blessings. Pray worship back to God by praising Him specifically for who He has and what He has done. Our prayer ought to begin by focusing on reverent worship overflowing in praise and thanksgiving.

2) RESPONSE –Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven

Once we have focused our hearts in worship of His majesty, we ought to consider our proper response to it.  That could take many forms; submitting ourselves to His will, confessing and repenting of sin, praying for His will in different aspects of our lives. It is inviting and asking the Lord to do His thing, not our thing. This is Romans 12 worship; offering bodies as living sacrifices.

3) REQUEST—Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

So often requests are not only the focus of our prayer, but the sum total of our prayers. According to Jesus only once we have come in reverence and right response, having turned our eyes to the LORD and His glory and goodness and have given ourselves in submission to His good will are we prepared to move towards our requests. This works to restrain us from the folly of making requests of the LORD while we are still caught up in self-focus and seeing our situation from only a human perspective. If you begin in reverence and response some of your requests are simply going to evaporate in the first movement—Lord, you know what, that one doesn’t really matter anymore— other requests will be transformed in the light of His glory— Lord I was going to pray for financial provision but having seen your glory I’m going to pray that my lack of finances draws me closer to you—.  

Yet do not miss that we are commanded to bring our every request to the LORD, right down to our daily bread and our need for ongoing grace and forgiveness. So ask. Come to Him as your father who knows your needs and delights to be the provider of every good thing.  

4) READINESS—lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil

The final movement of the Lord’s prayer is focused on moving forward. It is praying for personal growth in holiness. It is asking the Lord ‘help us go out from here to do what you have called us to do and to be what you have called us to be’. John Piper says this, “Until you know that life is war you cannot know what prayer is for”.  We are living in a battle and we want to see progress made. We want to bear fruit. We want to see His work in us and through us. This final movement is asking God to empower us to live in faith and obedience. 

He is worthy, we are needy. We come to Him in reverence, responding rightly to His holiness, bringing to Him our requests, and relying on Him for readiness in the battle. Why don’t you take some time right now to be with the LORD? Or maybe jot down a few notes to stick in your Bible for tomorrow morning. This is obviously not the only way to pray and this is intended to be fuel for the fire, not shackles that confine. Do not expect it to be easy. It will take thought and creativity and practice to learn to spend significant time with the LORD in prayer, but it is worth it. So let us engage the LORD in prayer, corporately and individually and let our first prayer be “LORD, teach us to pray”.